My Enemy's Enemy is my What?
by StarLiner42
Summary: Forty years after the Cylon war, the Twelve Colonies are once again thriving, when strange fleets of blue alien ships appear and begin wreaking havoc on the Colonies. Meanwhile, the Earth-Minbari war has dragged on for months with little hope of a human victory. These two civilizations are destined to intertwine, and change the course of the galaxy forever.
1. Signs of Things to Come

**A/N:** Alright. Here we go. This is a brain bug I've had in my head for a long time, and I wanted to finally get it on paper. The crossover is set a few months into the Earth-Minbari war on the B5 side of thing. After the Black Star's destruction, but well before the EA realizes all hope is lost. On the nBSG side it's set a few months before the fall of the Colonies.

 _Outskirts of the Cyrannus system._

"I'm telling you, I've worked everything from refinery ships to waste barges for fifteen years. I've _never_ seen a read out like that."

The six crewmen gathered around the beat up Dradis display. The ships command center, though it barely deserved the name, was a rusted shadow of what it had been long ago. Like the rest of the ship, it had been stripped of everything that wasn't absolutely vital. Some of the panels along the wall had been removed, exposing bare circuitry. Wires and cables were strewn across the four, the largest leading to console centered in the dimly lit room. Hunched over the front of the cracked display was a grimy, unkempt middle aged man. The so-called commander of the group clasped his forehead with one hand while messing with the ships instruments with the other.

"It's definitely a ship." The man spoke up while trying in vane to sort through the interference. "It changed course to follow us after we turned back for Canceron." The freighters Dradis was rudimentary, like most of the ship. Despite going six ways, and the bucket of scrap metal having been commissioned before the first Cylon war, it still cost the gang most of their life savings. Christened the _Schédio_ by her crew, the mining barge was supposed to have made them rich. Unfortunately, that dream seemed to be getting further away by the minute.

Obtaining a mining permit for the more lucrative inner belts was a bureaucratic nightmare without the right contacts. They couldn't have afforded it before they bought the ship, let alone after all was settled. The plan was to head way off the charted path, towards the outer belts, where few other ships bothered to go. Sure, they wouldn't have nearly the same concentration of precious metals, but surely there would be something out there, and they'd be the only ones around to collect it. Unfortunately, it had only been after they had bought the ship and made the 20 solar unit journey to the outskirts of the Helios-Delta system, that it had occurred to them to wonder why nobody else had done the same thing.

"And you're sure it's not a phantom?" A younger man barely out of his teenage years, filled with optimism only a week ago, piped up.

The older man's head shifted towards the youngest among them with a look of disgust, then back at the display. "I served five years as the sensor technician on a Berserk class cruiser in the military. Half my job was keeping the Dradis in check. Filtering out all the electromagnetic garbage." The mans hands rested on the table below the display, having finally giving up on trying to fight through the interference. The screen was garbled with static, and the target refused to give any sort of decent return. They knew it was there. They even had a rough idea of its heading. But it's size? Location? They could only guess its speed was somewhere close to their own because what little passed as a return stayed roughly the same.

"The Dradis was working fine right up until that thing jumped in." A woman dressed in bright orange overalls crawled out from a hatch below them. "I've been over the systems twice. It isn't a problem on our end. At least, anymore of a problem then we're used to."

The captain glanced at the system map to the right of the Dradis display. They'd be analyzing a comet for potential resources when this thing had appeared on their scope. Their first instinct had been raiders out to make a quick buck on a lone ship. They immediately broke off and jammed the throttle towards Canceron, the closest colony. Unfortunately, it was a full 30 hours away at this speed. They'd broadcasted a distress call, but there was a lot of jamming going on out there. That had been half an hour ago. At light speed the message should have reached every Colonial military unit in the system. So why weren't raptors jumping in, guns blazing?

And if they _were_ raiders, why hadn't they been given an ultimatum or blown up for scrap?

The captain helped the woman back up onto the command deck, and started down the shaft himself. "Nothing against you Joy, I'd like to check the system myself, just so I can see it with my own eyes. Yell at me if anything changes, will you?"

"Aye, captain." The woman said. Technically they had no ranks, but they had been friends going a long while back. It always brought a smile to him.

The man had been toying with the ship's innards for a good few minutes when the Dradis display made a loud, concerning chirp. The woman rushed over to examine the display. She hadn't the same experience with Dradis operations as the captain, but she knew enough. "Good news, the return is coming through _much_ clearer now. I can make out it's size, roughly. Looks about as big as a raptor. Maybe a bit bigger, it's still hard to tell."

"Is it giving off any kind of IFF?" The captain yelled back up.

"No... nothing. Not military or civilian. Nothing Colonial." Her eyes widened in alarm as she realized why the reading had grown clearer. There was still enough guck that they had a hard time judging distance. "It's closing in on us! Fast!"

The captain had rushed back up. He'd shoved her out of the way to look at the monitor. It had to be pirates. If it wasn't Colonial, and it wasn't pirates, it had to be... But it couldn't be. Not after forty years. _They wouldn't come back just to scare the hell out of one lone mining shi-_

His thoughts were interrupted as the ship rocked violently. Most of the gang had been knocked off their feet, Joy clung to the command console in a desperate attempt to keep her footing. _We're being attacked._ They're ship had been stripped of everything vital to daily operations. It was the only way they could afford it. No waste recycling. No FTL. No life pods. The ship rocked again, more violently then before. _Please, just be pirates. They're just trying to scare us. They'll board us, take us hostage. Hold us for ransom. The government will do something for us. They wouldn't just-_

A third rock severed the ship in half, the two sections blasting apart at the force of the separation. The crew was sucked into vacuum, Joy losing her grip on the console almost instantly. In his last moments of consciousness, the captain glanced at the craft that had ended the life of him and his friends. It silently drifted through the hulking wreck of the ship. It's hull was smooth, with a tail at the end. It took on a strange blue hue. It looked nothing like the Cylon ships they had grown up seeing in museums and movies. It looked different. Alien. Confusion was the last emotion to fill his mind as the cold took over and his body failed him.

* * *

 _Battlestar Galactica, Aquarian orbit._

 _Galactica's_ CIC was buzzing with activity. The crowded, dimly lit room was filled with twenty-odd officers busily attending to the ships operation. Most were seated at at large metal consoles, while others were shifting in and out of the room, delivering some tedious paper or giving yet another report that everything was operating normally. At the center of it all stood an older, grizzled looking man with light brown skin and glasses. An array of large, rectangular monitors loomed above them, humming softly as the ships Dradis scanned the space around them. They were empty of dots. Aside from the occasional civilian ship, they'd been empty for weeks.

Commander William Adama observed his officers tending to their routine duties. He took a long intake of breath. "Weekly maintenance report came in this morning. We've had some kind of residue building up under a storage room on C deck. Right under the bulkheads. They'll scrap it off, clean it up, it'll come back a few hours later." His gaze met a gruff, balding man in front of him. Colonel Tigh had been his friend much longer then he'd been his XO. That might have been the only reason this tour of duty had been tolerable.

It was a quiet few seconds before Tigh gave a reply. "It's probably some enterprising young enlistee trying to get in good with his bunk mates." He paused, moving a step closer to the commander, lowering his voice. "Sagittarius Elixir, they call it. It feels like a thousand tiny marbles going down your throat. Not the strongest kick, but that isn't the point this time. If you leave it out without much room, the crap that evaporates leaves behind this freaky guck." There was a tinge of pride in Tigh's voice as he described the odd beverage. "The Sagittaran's have a name for that stuff. Don't much care what it is though, the Sagittaran's have a name for everything."

Adama spoke flatly, now watching his officers as he spoke. "That's not a bad theory."

"Ten cubits he's one of the maintenance crew on C. Hides it under the bulkheads, then grabs it before they make their sweep. Shares it with his mates for gum and good shifts. I did the same thing when I was their age, but it wasn't with elixir, if you catch me." The silence resumed.

This time, Tigh broke it. "So..." he began. "Are we going to spend the next four months of our tour going on about... maintenance reports, stellar logs..."

Adama's gaze turned to meet him. "Not quite the send off she deserves, is it?" _Galactica's_ military career was about to end. She was to be decommissioned and turned into a museum after this last tour of duty. The admiralty had seen to it that the ship was given the least troublesome, most out of the way patrol a battlestar could ever receive.

Behind one of the bulky metal consoles, a young, nervous looking man was examining the monitor in front of him. Felix Gaeta was transcribing something on a cornerless piece of paper. He checked his notes, double checked the monitor, and turned to look at Adama, who was conversing with Tigh. _Which means I have to interrupt them_. The man grabbed his clipboard, took a breath, and began walking towards his CO.

The short walk felt like a mile. Gaeta was barely a month into his first deployment, and he theorized that feeling would fade with time. Tigh noticed him first, then Adama turned to meet him. Felix turned the clipboard and handed it to the commander. "A report from Delta's central traffic control reported three ships failing to arrive at their destinations in the past few hours. No contact from any of them, which you'd expect if they had some sort of engine trouble." He got the words out concisely. The admiral looked over his transcription for a moment.

"Could be solar storms. Might have knocked out the engines and stopped them from calling for help. All three were bound for Canceron?" His eyes went from the paper to Felix.

The officer nodded. "Yes, sir. They were all in roughly the same area on the outskirts of the system. It's a bit off our trail, but I thought it was worth mentioning." He finished off the last sentence wondering if this had been worth bringing to the Commander's attention. Helios-Delta was one of four stars that made up the Cyrannus star system. Two pairs of stars orbiting each other, each star home to a number of planets. The four stars were the home of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, and its twenty billion inhabitants.

Tigh, who'd been reading the report over Adama's shoulder, spoke. "Aquarian orbit is a long way off from Canceron. No transport is going to drift over into our area this soon." _Galactica's_ out of the way deployment involved patrolling the space around Aquaria, the quietest and least populated of the Twelve Colonies. Most of the rock was nothing but ocean with a few scattered islands, home to nothing but research outposts and luxury resorts. A few stubborn survivalists called it home, but even with all the tourism the number of people surface side barely reached six digits. Canceron, in contrast, was the most populated of all the colonies.

"You're right, Colonel. But I don't think Canceron would mind a few extra eyes giving the SR teams a hand." Adama handed the clipboard back to Gaeta. "We'll have a few raptors head out that way and coordinate with their search. Lets remind the pilots that this is a military ship, not a pleasure cruise." With the whole crew knowing very well their deployment was worry free and the ship was headed out the door anyway, things had become lax. Though Adama, headed for retirement himself, didn't run nearly as tight a ship as he used to, he intended to make sure _Galactica's_ pilots hadn't lost any edge by their next deployment.

Tigh grinned. "I'll make the call to the CAG myself. They'll be so disappointed about missing their nightly triad game." The Colonel seemed more attentive, eager to have something to stem the monotony, however minor. "It's a bit odd though, having so many ships affected by solar storms. I thought even civilian ships were hardened against that stuff."

Adama shook his head. "The storm probably frakked with their navigation computers. You know, a lot of these hotshot captains rely so much on their computers doing the hard work for them that they don't know how to react when they fail." The commander was very opinionated on the fleet's recent obsession with integrated networks and reliance on computers. Their species had been almost wiped out the last time they wanted a better computer to make life easier.

Gaeta, who was still standing in front of them, looked uncomfortable at the commander's last comment. Adama let out a small chuckle. "How are you liking your first assignment? Nothing like you expected, I'm sure."

Felix had spent the last two years of his life at the academy learning every nut and bolt of the integrated systems Adama seemed to despise. Ironically, after all that training, he was assigned to the last warship in the Colonial fleet that didn't possess any networked systems. Everything was still done with pen and paper, or by manually moving data chips around the ship. He felt his nervous attitude return. "It's... not quite what I expected. Uh... But I'm enjoying it." He felt Adama's eyes lock on him. " _Galactica's_ a fine ship with a long history. I'm honored to be able to serve on her before she retires." Adama let a small smile show before he dismissed him.

Tigh picked up the phone and began dialing the flight deck as Gaeta walked back to his station. Adama glanced at the empty Dradis screen for the tenth time of the day.

* * *

 _Battlestar Triton, pilots ready room, Canceron orbit_

Kara Thrace seated herself in the furthest row back from the CAG. It was the best spot in the briefing room to watch over the other pilots and judge their reactions to whatever it was the CAG was saying. Squadron emblems adorned three walls of the very modern looking room. In clear view at the front was a giant Kara had served in the Colonial military for nearly a decade now, and had the reputation of a natural combat pilot, but her attitude had kept her career advancement in stasis. Her current deployment on the _Triton_ had been mostly patrol and escort duty, but it had its moments.

"...And a tyllium transport was scheduled to arrive three hours ago has dropped off the map as well. that makes five civilian ships." Most of the ships raptor pilots had been fetched out of the blue to take part in search and rescue operations for a few missing civilian ships. Kara fought to keep her eyes open. She felt a strong sense of annoyance. Why would she be called in for this? She wasn't even a raptor pilot. She was qualified for them, sure, but she belonged in a viper.

The CAG continued. "That makes this the largest shipping incident in the last decade. Our first thought was some sort of solar storm, but if that were the case we would have lost contact with every ship in the region at once. This is much more intermittent." Behind him was a map of the Helios Delta zoomed in on Canceron's section of the solar system. Dots indicated the last known position of the vanishing ships, laid seemingly at random. One or two ships wasn't unusual, but five? All in roughly the same area of space? That was enough for the military to bat an eye.

Kara was starting to get a sense of why viper pilots were being called in for this. The CAG went on for another few minutes, briefly going over profiles for the missing ships, where they could have drifted, and acknowledging a far more malicious possibility. Raiders were known to prey on shipping, but that Tyllium transport had been almost right on top of Canceron. They would have to be extremely bold to try their luck this close to military patrols. And if had been raiders, or Gods forbid, terrorists... they should have been getting distress calls.

Now the CAG was going over raptor assignments and search patterns. Space was big, and as the ships had more time to drift, the search space increased exponentially. He was just beginning to assign copilots when an officer walked into the room with a worrisome expression on his face. He locked eyes with the CAG, and whispered something to him out of earshot of the pilots. The two conversed for a few seconds before the CAG thanked him and addressed the room. "Change of plans. Search and rescue just got a lot more complicated."

* * *

 _Battlestar Triton, CIC_

 _Triton_ and ships like her were the middle child of the Colonial fleet. While the Valkyrie class lacked the utility or self sufficiency of the much larger Mercury type Battlestars, they could still punch just as hard. They were among latest and most sophisticated warships in the Colonial arsenal. Advances in computer and networking technology forbid even the slightest hitch from going unnoticed by the ship's crew. Aside from keeping ship functions running efficiently, it meant damage control teams could respond to crises areas in record time during battle. The computers managed everything from air distribution to target acquisition and tracking. _Triton's_ weapons could certainly still be aimed and fired manually, the computers operated them with a level of precision no human could ever hope to match.

At least, that's how they preformed in live fire exercises. Honest to Gods combat between capital ships had been nonexistent since the end of the Cylon war. With the unification of the Colonies, there just wasn't any other major human faction left. The looming Cylon presence kept the military well funded, but actually testing new hardware to fight an enemy you hadn't seen or heard of in four decades was problematic.

The dark skinned, clean cut man presiding over the warship's command center was well aware of that fact. Commander Holloway had taken part in more than his fair share of simulated battles. But simulations were one thing. You could go through all the trouble you wanted to make it look and act like the real thing, but it would never truly match up. Or at least, that's what his professors had drilled into him through fifteen years of service. Holloway's only taste of real combat had been playing whack-a-mole with pirates around the Colonies. Nothing that could ever threaten a true warship.

The last day and a half had been eventful as it was stressful. And it just got a lot worse. When the first ship or two went missing, it was business as usual. Ever since the unification of the Colonies, the Colonial Fleet had been in charge of spearheading most search and rescue operations. Then the third, fourth, and fifth disappeared without a trace... and the military stepped up its game. If it had been intentional, the lack of distress signal would imply something had jammed the civilian ships. Pirates or terrorists with that kind of kit was a nightmare scenario. The transmission they'd just received had brought that scenario one step closer to reality.

Raptors had identified the remains of one of the civilian cargo ships that went missing. It'd been blasted to pieces, its wreckage scattered across thousands of kilometers. Nothing pirates had should have been capable of so utterly destroying a ship of that size.

"Sir, another transmission from Picon fleet headquarters." A red headed woman piped up from her console opposite of the massive Dradis display. The comms officer had served on _Triton_ for two years. She never seemed terribly ambitious to Holloway, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He much preferred the attitude over some of the officers fresh out of the academy who saw their post as nothing more than a stepping stone to something better. Lieutenant Kira was level headed and dependable, traits an officer was desperately in need of when they'd be getting an earful from fleet headquarters ten hours a day. "Admiral Rigel will be jumping into orbit aboard the _Pacifica_ within the hour." Holloway nodded as he double checked his electronic pad, with a transcript of the brief communication already transmitted and awaiting reading.

With a mixture of surprise and excitement, the man standing to Holloway's right remarked, "The _Pacifica?"_ Colonel Sager had served aboard _Triton_ as Holloway's XO coming up on five years. He had taken some warming up to those first few months. Sager was plenty loyal, and definitely qualified for the job, but he had a tendency to be opinionated. Sager had spent more than half his life on Leonis, one of the oldest and most historically rich of the Colonies. While Leonis had become a democracy alongside the rest of the Colonies, it never truly let go of its imperial heritage.

"Pacifica's one of our flag ships." Sager continued. "I'd guess the fleet's trying to prove they have a handle on the situation before word gets out to the public."

Sager's gaze turned to the Dradis display, faithfully displaying _Triton_ and the rest of her battlegroup in formation. On an typical day, a Battlestar Group was composed of one or two battlestars and their support ships. A mix of frigates and fuel tankers. The latter would jump away if combat looked probable, but were vital for any kind of long term operations. Now that it was clear something was hunting civilian ships near Canceron, it sounded like a second BSG was being called in.

Holloway checked the time. Three hours between the first raptor reported the wreckage and one of the most modern ships in the fleet _and_ her battle group being deployed in orbit. That was breakneck speed by Colonial standards. It concerned him.

"We'll track the bastards down." Sager said spitefully, noting his commanding officer appeared deep in thought. "It wouldn't be the first overzealous crop of terrorists we've put down. The admiralty is probably just giving us the extra ships so we can step up patrols. Make the civilian ships feel more secure." Traffic around Canceron was too populated to give every ship an escort, even with the extra support. Holloway made a mental note not to mention that during any future pep talk.

Holloway's real concern wasn't pirates or terrorists, but something else. Something far more dangerous that they hadn't seen or heard from in decades. The Cylons were still out there, somewhere. His tablet beeped again, notifying him of a new message. Almost immediately after, Kira called out for his attention. Raptors had found another wreck. This time a civilian transport. One of the Olympic liners. The largest class of passenger tug there was. It would have been carrying somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand people, probably. Holloway asked Kira to check the flight manifest. Eight-hundred Seventy-Three souls. The transport had weapons, too. Basic ones, but enough to fight off pirates. They didn't help. The wreckage had been scattered just as far as the last one.

These weren't pirates. And Holloway had a growing suspicion they weren't terrorists, either.


	2. How, Why, doesn't matter

_Canceron Traffic Control Station, Hades_

"Colonial heavy five-nine-eight, you're clear for descent to Hades. Sorry for the delay." The radio operator let out let out an exasperated sigh as she cut contact with the latest ship captain to give her an earful. That particular ship had been waiting for clearance to break orbit for nearly two hours. The landing queue was disastrously backed up. Every star port on the planet was in crunch mode to get whatever ship they could on a landing pad. Or, at this point, at least something that could probably pass for one. They had drilled for emergencies before. Everything from shipping accidents to a catastrophic solar storm. Actually experiencing it was more wearing than anything else. The freighters pissed about missing their deadline, or every first class pleasure ship demanding priority access...

After the wreckage of the second ship had been found, Canceron's government ordered a full stop on civilian traffic. Nothing but military ships were permitted to take off, and every civilian ship already in space was to turn back immediately.

Throughout the room, dozens of personal were rushing to manage their star port's allotted slice of Canceron's now overcrowded orbit. Canceron possessed one of the most sophisticated global DRADIS networks in the Colonies. The GDN consisted of hundreds of satellites in geostationary orbit, and was sensitive enough to detect a lose bolt. Together with the dozens of star ports, it ensured that interplanetary commerce went smoothly and largely without incident.

Nathan Gardner was going over the latest batch of ships to make orbit. Some had passengers in need of urgent medical care, others had perishable cargo, and one was carrying a hold filled with the treatment for a particularly virulent disease that had broken out in one of the major cities. Gardner flagged that ship for priority landing. If only the rest were that clear cut, he thought to himself.

"We're going to be backlogged hours, Gods help us." He said to no one in particular. He rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the headache that hadn't gone away since the mess began. A disruption on this scale would have consequences, and if it wasn't something worlds-shatteringly important, heads somewhere were going to role. He took a breath, and focused himself again on the screen in front of him. His job was to make sure things _here_ went smoothly.

Gardner was arguing with a botanical transport over the intricacies of Colonial maritime law, when a klaxon started blaring throughout the room. Gardner immediately turned his attention to the massive Dradis screen mounted to the front wall of the control room. Was there a collision? With panicky civilian transports this packed it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. But that wouldn't explain the strange contortions beginning to form on the display.

"Massive radiation spike in our sector!" One of his coworkers, a short haired man monitoring a display zoomed in on a subsection of Canceron's space, called out. "Some kind of..." He paused mid sentence, double and triple checking his instruments. "Some kind of anomaly. Dozens of them, approximately six hundred thousand kilometers above the surface."

"What the frak do you mean _anomaly?_ Do we have any satellites in that area?"

"Yes sir, Sat-83 is fifteen kilometers from the outer edge of the radspike."

"Bring up the visual feed from 83 on the main display, and zoom in." The global traffic map was replaced by a flood of colors where there should have been a star field. Blue and black swirled across the monitor, growing rapidly. Then the feed cut to static.

"The interference is messing with our connection, there's too much for a visual feed. I still have a data link."

"What the frak was _that_?" Gardner called out, his mind in disarray. He began grasping at straws as he looked over their instruments. A massive radiation spike, then all of their equipment was flooded with a blast of EM waves, deafening every Dradis satellite in the region.

Not a solar storm. Not a malfunction. He knew damn well what those looked like. That thing they were watching was something else entirely.

"Radiation readings are starting to subside, now dropping rapidly. We should-" The alert klaxon hadn't been silenced thirty seconds when another siren took it's place. The technician's voice became more urgent. "Contact!"

Just as the distortions had faded away, dozens of them. All flashing with a red-white marker and a menacing identification underneath. _Unknown._

"What in Gods name are those?" Gardner stood frozen in place, watching as the Dradid display itself now began to malfunction. The image began to contort. Half the readings were a scrambled, formless mess.

"I can't get an exact number, whatever they are, they're generating massive electromagnetic interference. It's impossible to get a clear image." The man began frantically adjusting his instruments, trying to glean some kind of information from them.

 _Deep breath._ "Okay." Gardner took a step back, and turned to the rest of the room. "Shela, I want you to check the status of the rest of the GDN, find out if that goop is just on our end or the entire network. Jensen, broadcast in the clear for all civilian ships to stay calm and await instructions. Get as many out of line of sight with those ships as you can. Funnel them through nav beacons like sheep if you have to. I don't want every damned ship in orbit running around with their head cut off."

"The rest of you, coordinate with your superiors to delegate ships and-"

"Sir," The man behind Gardner cut him off. His voice trembled. "The unknown ships just started moving. They're headed straight for the planet."

* * *

The space around Kara Thrace looked as if it were on fire. Dozens of flak bursts exploded in the space between battlestars like miniature suns. Her vision was tunneled in on a small blue craft directly ahead of her, only slightly aware of her hand cramping from the death grip on her throttle. The ship couldn't have been much bigger than her viper. It looked nothing remotely like the old pictures of Cylon fighters they saw growing up. Those had looked like a giant silver wing. These were light blue and purple, and composed of a central shaft with three fins jutting out across it. And dear gods, the firepower on those things...

" _Striker, bogey on your six, break left, now!"_ It took a great feat of willpower to keep her composure over the comm. Kara watched helplessly as bright green flashes erupted from the alien looking fighter, vaporizing another viper and the pilot she'd been trying to warn.

" _What the frak are these things firing?"_ A pilot desperately howled out over the radio. The deck crews wouldn't have to worry about patching up damaged Vipers. A glancing blow seemed to be all that was needed to blast one out of the sky.

" _Some kind of energy weapon."_ Their squadron leader was giving it his best effort to keep their wing men together through the onslaught. Kara's DRADIS told her he was just a few dozen meters directly above her. Unfortunately, any reading outside of point blank range was worthless. " _Targeting computers frakked, I can't get a lock."_

 _Join the club._ Her Viper's computer could barely get a reading on any of the enemy fighters. They must have had some kind of jamming, because she might as well have been using nothing but her eyeballs. Judging by the scene in front of her, the big guns weren't having any more luck. Far ahead she could see what had to be dozens of massive ships colored like the fighters they were engaging. They were far taller than they were long, a trait Kara couldn't recall seeing on any other warship. They, too, had a set of three massive fins protruding from their hull, one on top and two more on the lower left and right. In another setting they would have looked beautiful, more like giant angel fish than warships.

Streaks of bright green light blasting from the hull of the fish-like ships destroyed that image. The war cruisers seemed to have much larger versions of the beam weapons on the fighters. And they were making mincemeat out of their battlestars. The _Dione_ already looked like it was crumbling. Massive chunks of hull were seared off one of the flight pods, and the ship was blasted from bow to stern with holes where the energy beams had cut through the hull on one side and drilled until it hit the other. The other battlestars were taking a pounding, but thankfully weren't as far gone as _Dione._

" _Gemstone, you're my new wing. Starbuck, get back up here, you're too far out."_

Kara barely registered her call sign over the radio. Her eyes were still trained on the fighter that had taken Striker out moments ago. Kara had known him from the first day she'd been assigned to _Triton._ She had a clear view, if she could just close the gap...

Thrace slammed on her viper's boosters in pursuit of the enemy fighter. It must have noticed her, because it started going evasive just as she was lining up her shot. She squeezed the trigger fractions of a second too soon, and watched as the fighter beelined for _Triton's_ hull. It was hugging the deck, trying to throw off her shot. Kara mashed her attitude thrusters, keeping herself straight above the blue fighter. Again she squeezed the trigger. Shots rippled across _Triton's_ hull, falling just short of the fighter, and then...

" _Got hits on contact!"_ A set of bullets had connected with the fighter, and the small craft was spinning out of control. It looked like the pilot was trying to correct himself, making short controlled bursts with what Kara could only guess were maneuvering thrusters in a last ditch attempt to regain control of the fighter. Kara had all the time in the world to put her guns on target, squeeze the trigger for a third time, and felt a sense of pride as the fighter exploded in a ball of flame.

 _Whatever they are, they die just the same._ Kara repositioned her Viper, and boosted for the rest of her squadron."Contact down, I'm coming back. Hope you guys didn't miss me too much."

* * *

Another blast rocked _Triton's_ hull, nearly throwing Holloway off his feet. They were lucky enough to get ten minutes worth of warning before the unidentified ships started shooting. Enough time to get to action actions and put fighters in the air, but not enough for reinforcements to arrive. Which meant they were fighting a desperately one sided battle.

"Decks 34 to 39 are reporting violent decompression." A flustered crewman was scrambling to keep up with the ships damage control systems, working in tandem with the computer to determine what sections of the ship received priority. "DC teams are losing containment of the fire in the upper port engine pod, recommend we shut it down and vent the entire area."

Sager's eyes were glued to a display of _Triton's_ hull. He was fighting to keep the ship afloat while Holloway was managing the battle itself. "Do it, cram as much power into the lower port engine as you can away with to compensate."

They'd never trained to handle the kind of weapons currently hammering the fleet. Once they punched through the ships armor, the energy beams melted through entire decks like butter. They were pulling every trick they could think of to keep damaged sections of the ship out of the line of fire, but there was only so much they could do.

"Gunnery still can't get a targeting solution on enemy capital ships." The ships tactical officer had been trying to break through the jamming from the moment they realized it was there. Dradis was next to useless, and their targeting computers couldn't get a lock on anything.

Holloway's attention was on the Dradis display, despite its impairment it was still allowing them to monitor their position and that of the rest of their fleet. "Order batteries to switch to barrage fire, try to box in the closest warship and zero in from there. Have gunnery crews adjust fire manually."

They were easily outnumbered five to one. And if the weapons those ships were fielding was any indication, numbers weren't the only thing on the enemies side. How the Cylons could possess such devastating weapons was a question for another time. The reality right now was their fleet was the only thing between them and seven billion people. One of the green markers on the Dradis console started blinking.

"Massive power fluctuations from the _Coelus."_ Kira was relaying Holloway's orders to their fighter squadron, and _Pacifica's_ fleet movements back to Holloway. "Oh, gods..." She put a hand to her headset. "All fighters clear _Coelus's_ airspace. Repeat, all fighters-."

Holloway watched hopelessly as the green dot representing over a thousand people broke into dozens of fragments as the ship shattered. They wouldn't be long for this world themselves at this rate.

"That's two battlestars in ten minutes." Sager's voice barely held back a sense of despair. "We can't stay here, there's no point in us all getting massacred for a losing battle."

Sager was no coward. He knew him well enough to know he'd gladly put his life on the line if it would count. But he was right. Their line was crumbling. Another few minutes and they're fleet would be debris. To stay and fight would be a pointless death.

Holloway turned to Kira. "Sitrep on _Pacifica,_ what's her status?"

Kira manipulated her panel for a moment, then put her hand to her ear piece oncemore. "Pacifica, Triton. Requesting orders." She worked to keep her voice steady as another blast rocked the hull.

Sager scanned the Dradis readout for _Pacifica._ Rigel had placed her between the enemy formation and another crumbling battlestar. " _Pacifica's_ the most well armored ship in the fleet, Rigel's trying to let her take the hits for the rest of us."

"Sir, admiral Rigel is ordering an immediate retreat from Canceron's orbit. They're saying..." Kira paused, asked for confirmation from the other end, then ended the link and spoke again. " _Pacifica_ has lost power to her FTL drive. She's ordering her birds to disperse to the surviving ships and will cover our retreat."

Holloway's eyes shut hard, his hand grabbing at his hair. _Pacifica_ was one of the flagships, named after one of the original battlestars that had defended the Colonies fifty years ago. Like its predecessor, it would save thousands again before it met its end. "Kira, authorize combat landings. Damage control, status on our FTL drive?"

The woman manning the navigation console on the wall opposite of Holloway called out. "FTL drive is operational sir, but the computer is having a difficult time calculating a jump in all this EM interference."

"Well this situation just keeps getting better." Sager shook again another blast rocked the ship, destroying half the glass panes that marked the entrance to CIC.

"Do the best you can, and we'll hope for the best. Holloway turned his attention away from the Dradis console, and called out to CIC. "Commence emergency jump prep, prepare for hyper light jump on my mark."

* * *

" _All Vipers, combat landings authorized. Emergency jump imminent. All Vipers land immediately."_

Kara was forced to end her pursuit of another blue-purple ship she had set her sights on, and turn her fighter to _Triton's_ hanger pod. The enemy fighter would hear nothing of it. She ducked and weaved as best she could as it turned to pursue her, each shot landing a few inches closer to her bird. Just as she was about to swing her viper around in a last ditch effort to destroy her hunter, a bright explosion lit up the canopy from outside her vision.

" _Starbuck, stop playing with your food. It'll just come back and bite you."_

Kara laughed. "Just keeping it warm for you, Gemstone." With great skill, she guided her battle worn viper to _Triton's_ hanger pod with the rest of her squadron. She'd never been so thankful to

The blue warships had no interest in closing in to finish the job, preferring to cut through the human warships from a distance like a skilled surgeon with a scalpel. The human ships were crippled and dying, with no hope of escape. While unfamiliar, they were undoubtedly Terran, which made them just as valid a target as any for their holy war. The alien commanders leading the charge were momentarily confused when the human ships vanished before them in brilliant flashes of white. The one stray ship to stay behind was cut to shreds moments later. Their scouts would find the remaining human outposts in the system. And as inevitably as the rising sun, they would fall. One after the other, after the other... until none were left to insult Dukhat's memory.

* * *

" _Action stations, action stations, set condition one throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Action stations, Action stations..."_

Adama poured over the transmission a second time through. _Cylon attack underway. This is not a drill._ Canceron was being hit, and hit hard. Why now, why after forty years? The grizzled old man forced himself to save that question for another time. What mattered now was getting his ship into the fight. Information was scarce, but the communication networks around the planet were still functioning, at least for now. While good for them, it was another piece of this whole mess that didn't add up to him. It should have been among the first things the Cylons hit.

Colonel Tigh stepped into CIC, and saluted his superior. "Did we finally track down the cowards responsible for hitting the civilian ships?"

Adama handed Tigh a copy of the transmission, but didn't wait for him to read through it. "Cylons hit Canceron twenty minutes ago and engaged our forces. No word on who has the upper hand. All military units in the system have been ordered to rendezvous at pockets around the planet." The ship was already underway. The colonel could feel the ever so slight momentum of the ship.

Tigh read through the transcript with a horrified expression, while Adama wasted no time barking out orders. "Mister Gaeta, I need you to set course for this location at best possible speed. I also want you to map out the location of all friendly forces in Delta, and how soon you estimate they'll arrive at Canceron." Dozens of Colonial ships would be jumping in over the next few hours. They couldn't risk jumping directly into Canceron's orbit, instead regrouping at various strategic points throughout the system, before making their move.

"Gods damn." Tigh set the paper down and stared blankly ahead. _Please let this be a prank that just went too far. Let this be some idiot trying to give Galactica a kick in the ass_. "It's really happening. War with the Cylons."

Adama didn't reply, instead going over a sheet of paper Gaeta had just given to him. On it was a list of all military ships in the system. He recognized the names of most of the battlestars. He'd even been on a few of them. One in particular stuck out. "The _Triton_ is in orbit right above Canceron." He turned to Tigh, and when the rest of the crew weren't looking, allowed his eyes to betray a small degree of the fear in his eyes. "Kara's on that ship."

* * *

 **A/N:** I hope you enjoyed this first foray into the brain bug that I've been developing for some time. Any comments, suggestions are welcome. I don't shy away from criticism, and would be appreciative of it. I'm hoping for the next update to have something from the EA's perspective. This won't be just a BSG centered fix by a long shot.


	3. Not The Devil You Know

Welcome to the third update, now with 100% more line breaks and EA perspective. I had to spend a good deal of my time studying for exams. I'm surprised and grateful this is being received so well. I was hoping to find a beta reader to tell me if something I'm about to post is filled with malarkey, so feel free to PM me if you're interested. I'm also more than willing to beta, myself. I'm still kind of new at this, so I'm hoping these updates aren't too short/long/whatever.

* * *

Helena Cain exhaled softly as the feeling of compression wore off her. For those who weren't used to the sensation, FTL jumps were a disorienting experience. It felt as if something was pressing down against your body on all sides, squeezing and folding you. Serving in the fleet, you either got used to it or didn't make it. She didn't even feel dizzy after a jump anymore. After a few brief moments, the feeling left her. The hum of _Pegasus's_ jump drive, having discharged its energy, began to fade away. The ships Dradis began chirping as it started picking up the rest of the battle group. A dozen dots popped into existence, one after the other.

"Jump completed." an operations officer said in a cool voice, listening to the callouts of the rest of the fleet. "All ships accounted for. Nav computer indicates minimal deviation from target coordinates."

Helena's XO, a man opposite of the command console, smiled in a vain attempt to keep CIC's spirits up. Belzen had served in the Colonial military almost as long as admiral Cain. The relatively young woman had shot through the ranks and made rear admiral in record time. "Not a bad start." She didn't acknowledge him. Her eyes scanned the Dradis display, mentally accounting for the fleet herself.

In their haste to depart from Scorpia, Cain and her command staff hadn't even had time to be fully briefed. Her eyes turned to an electronic data pad in her hand. She scrolled through the touchscreen, taking in what little information FleetCom had gathered before their jump. They were twenty minutes from Artemis station at best speed. With the clock ticking, that wasn't nearly fast enough for Cain. They'd lost contact with the station not long after the fighting started. When the raptors they sent to investigate also failed to report back, it was decided time was of the essence, and their fleet was sent in. Such a cautious approach wasn't in her nature, but she couldn't risk _Pegasus_ and her fleet as well. She handed the pad to Belzen.

"The station is likely under attack." She said in a clipped tone, rebuking her XO's previous comment. This was most decidedly not a good start. " _Solaria's_ battle group was stationed nearby, they've been ordered to Rendezvous with us at Artemis. Once the station is secure, we'll use it as a staging area to regroup and counterattack."

"Complete communication blackout?" Her XO asked in astonishment, scanning over the latest dispatch for himself at a rapid pace. "It'd take a hell of a jamming rig to cut off a station that big. And we don't have any idea what we're dealing with out there? Fighters? Baseships? Numbers?" "

Helena shook her head. "We're in the dark about the exact size and strength of the Cylon fleet, but we know their force is significant. Canceron's defense fleet was overwhelmed before we realized we were under attack, and the reinforcements we jumped in don't seem to be faring much better."

Belzen, who had been too focused making preparations for their jump to keep updated on how the fight was shaping, seemed momentarily taken aback. It was his job to keep the ship running smoothly, while the admiral focused on the bigger picture. "Sounds like a grim first hour. Are you sure its wise having us fly out to Artemis without knowing how they're cutting through our fleet so easily?"

"Artemis is the largest military installation in the system, it's too strategically important to risk the time for another recon mission before sending in the cavalry." After a moment of silence, her voice turned thoughtful. "I know it's a risk, Nagala knows its a risk, but if we lose Artemis we're going to be in a very difficult spot."

Belzen nodded in agreement. Helena considered him a close friend. The two had just finalized plans to go paragliding on Scorpia during _Pegasus's_ upcoming overhaul, an activity the admiral hadn't been able to indulge in for years. Unfortunately, it looked like those plans had just flown out the window.

"Colonel Fisk," Cain called out. A large, wide man stood at attention. Behind him a rectangular, transparent monitor took up most of the space from one wall to the other, displaying the Helios Delta system in its entirety. The strategic display showed the last known locations of friendly ships, and the probable locations of enemies. The map displayed information from every source at their disposal. Fleet logs, satellite surveillance, reconnaissance raptors... Right now, a sizable grouping of red dots was hovering near Canceron. "Transmit our course to the rest of the fleet on tight-beam. Order them to maintain open wireless silence as long as possible."

"Yes sir, transmitting on tight-beam." He replied immediately. Fisk was half comm officer, half operations specialist. He maintained a birds eye view of the situation as it developed, making sure the command staff had all the information they had at their disposal. A tight-beam transmission was a communique shot directly at the target ship's comm dish from very close range. It was used between ships in formation when they couldn't risk broadcasting openly, possibly giving away their position.

Cain studied the strategic board. They would make the fourth Battlestar Group to reinforce the system. She ran through the battle in front of them in her head. Nineteen battlestars in system, plus three dozen cruisers and escort ships. "Our biggest problem is going to be covering the entire planet." She thought out loud. "Even if we can match their fleet, we're looking at massive casualties if the Cylons decide to go nuclear. They could wipe out every major city on the planet before we have a chance to intercept them."

"We jumped as close to the action as we could get away with." Belzen commented. "Any closer to Artemis and we would've risked appearing right in the middle of an enemy fleet." Jumping directly into a combat zone was a risky proposition. The disorientation and momentary blindness left a ship vulnerable to attack if it happened to jump right on top of something. It had always been standard Colonial doctrine during the first Cylon war to jump in well away from the combat zone, and make the rest of the trip at sub-light.

The admiral rested her chin on the back of her hand, her fingers shifting out and back in, as they tended to do when she was buried in thought. Artemis was located at Canceron's L2 point, anchored behind the far side of the planet's unusually large moon. Their position relative to the main fight would mean they couldn't be part of any missile interception effort. It was consequence of the calculus of war that Artemis was deemed more strategically important than a dozen cities.

"Sorry, but it looks like we'll have to postpone that overhaul." The admiral said as she turned towards a tall, blonde, Gemenese woman standing over one of the control panels. Gina Inviere was a network specialist who'd been helping oversee a major update to the Colonial's defense mainframe. It had been on the planning board for months. They had been making final preparations to disconnect _Pegasus's_ networks as part of the overhaul, but much like paragliding on Scorpia, that plan had been axed.

"It's alright, we have bigger problems now." She replied uneasily. "I've been going over _Pegasus's_ computer systems like you asked. Everything is working at peak efficiency, and I've triple checked your firewalls. The Cylons won't even be able to hack the mess to find out what you had for breakfast this morning." She smiled weakly, looking as if she was grateful for an opportunity to contribute in what little ways she could.

"Thank you, Ms. Inviere." Cain said, in a more welcoming tone than the command staff was used to. "I realize you're not officially an officer, but you're welcome to stay in CIC if you'd like. We could use you when the Cylons inevitably try to infiltrate our systems."

"Thank you, admiral, I'd like to stay. Whatever I can do to help." Her smile grew at Cain's comment, then quickly faded away.

Cain's thoughts briefly brightened. Having Gina with her would go a long way towards easing her nerves. She fought to keep the darkness out of her mind. Memories of her father gunned down by Centurions while she ran to safety. Flashbacks of abandoning her sister so she could hide from the Cylons. They had taken everything from her. She swore she wouldn't hesitate. She would use everything at her disposal to make sure those things wouldn't have the chance to do to so many others what they had done to her.

* * *

An intense beam of white light illuminated the man's vision. The star field vanished and was replaced a raptor's silhouette floating along the black. The suited man's breathing remained slow and methodical as he made his way across a wide gash cutting into _Triton's_ hull plating. He kept a tight grip on the railing, slowly making his way down the three decks worth of damage this particular wound went. Above him, teams were welding bulkheads into place, plugging up breaches in the ships badly scarred hull.

" _Triton, on D. I'm at the airseal between sections 33 and 34. I'm closing it now."_ His hands felt for the manual control. Finally, he started rotating a large, red colored valve. The door dividing the deck slowly slammed shut.

" _That's the last airlock on D. We should be good to go."_

* * *

"Alright, good work. Get back up here and we'll try repressurizing the deck." A man dressed in a yellow-orange jumpsuit studied a monitor displaying a top-down view of _Triton_. His damage control panel gave a distressingly detailed overview of the ship. The corridor was filled with a scent of smoke and burnt metal. Behind him, Colonel Sager oversaw one of _Triton's_ DC teams.

"How are we looking?" Asked the well built XO, carrying a flash light in one hand. The haze of smoke was still thick enough to make seeing more than ten feet in front of you impossible.

The orange-suited engineer wiped the sweat off his brow, marking it with black soot. His suit was covered with dark scorch marks, and the edge of his hair looked as if it had been burnt. "The good news is we should have D deck habitable again within the hour. It was the deepest hit, so it had the fewest holes to plug up. Once it has air we'll send a team in to get Dradis up and running again."

"Sounds like progress." Sager said hopefully. "What about engines?"

"We got most of the fires out before they could spread to anything critical. The computerized DC systems worked as advertised and sealed off certain compartments before we realized how bad they were. We still had to sever the fuel lines to the lower port engine, that alone is going to be a month in drydock. I wouldn't recommend anything over fifty percent thrust, it's still pretty fragile."

"I'll tell the commander to keep it under fifty. When will you have your full report?"

"Not too long. I'll send someone to report directly to Holloway when we have a clearer picture of our condition. And... one last thing." He hesitated, trying to decide how to put his next thought into words. "The inner decks were breached so suddenly we didn't have time to warn people to get out. There's a lot of bodies down there."

Sager studied the damage control board. Entire sections of the outermost decks were hit badly enough they couldn't spare the time or energy to get them running again. The longer they stayed that way, the greater the chance a lot of those bodies would drift away, never to be seen again. "They have a temporary morgue set up in the lower cargo hold. Move the bodies from D down there after you have it pressurized. As for the rest..." He paused, taking a breath. "Have DC teams stay focused on repairs. I'm sorry, we just don't have time to collect bodies right now."

The XO could see some of the light drain from the engineer's face. He didn't speak. The Colonel put a hand on his shoulder. "I understand how hard it is. My father was killed in the first war before I was a teenager. He just left one day and never came back. But they gave their lives so we could have a shot, and we need to make the best use of the time they've given us. It's what they would want."

Sager watched as the engineer solemnly nodded his head, and walked off. The smoke had vented out enough that he no longer needed his light on as he made his way back to CIC.

* * *

Holloway examined the pictures transmitted by the raptor guiding _Triton's_ exterior repair crews. _Triton_ looked like a charred cinder. She had no less then twenty holes blasted across her hull, and a number of lacerations that looked as if somebody had gone after the ship with a surgeon's knife. The longer he went over it in his head, the less sense the battle over Canceron made to him.

"The exterior damage looks worse then it is." The engineer said matter-of-factly to Holloway. "At least, in some ways. Wherever the hull was hit just once or twice, our armor took the brunt of the damage. But when multiple hits connected in the same area... like along the stern here, near the engine pod, they just cut through the plating and started hitting our guts."

Sager, now coordinating repair efforts from CIC, piped up. "Go tell the bodies filling up the lower cargo bay the exterior damage isn't as bad as it looks." Holloway shot him a glare.

"I get your point." Holloway said. "Continue"

"Uh.." The man hesitated. "We have D deck pressurized again. A team is down there working on Dradis as we speak. The starboard flight pod was critically damaged and we don't think we're going to get the launch tubes on that side of the ship working again. A lot of the power lines were cut when they made that gash you're looking at."

Holloway's face remained unchanged he spoke. "Have the flyboys transfer all flight operations to the port pod. It'll be crowded, but better than having half our vipers out of commission. What's the story on our jump drive?"

"Technically, sir, FTL still works. But that last jump really knocked the crap out of her. With all this damage, I wouldn't recommend another. The structural integrity of the ship is too badly compromised. If we made another jump we'd risk severing the entire starboard flight pod and possibly lose the ship."

Holloway nodded. "If trouble finds us again we might not have a choice. Make Dradis your number one priority. Even with our raptors spotting for us we're deaf and blind right now." Their raptors had sophisticated sensors, but they lacked the range of a battlestar. So long as their ship-board dradis remained offline, they would have significantly less warning of any incoming.

"We'll get on it, sir."

"Good. Thank you. One last thing. Do we have a final casualty count yet?"

"We've still got a few people in critical condition down in medical, but..." The engineer. "Three-hundred fifty-two last count."

 _More than a third of the crew,_ Holloway thought. He didn't seem to react. Not to the outside observer, anyway. "Keep the progress reports coming, chief. That'll be all. Dismissed."

With that, the engineer saluted and walked off. Holloway waited until he was clearly out of earshot before speaking up again.

"Really knocked the crap out of us is right." The commander said half jokingly. "When we have Dradis, we'll set course for Aerlion at best possible speed. It's the closest colony with a shipyard that can take us."

"It'll take us a couple days at sub-light." Sager remarked. "Not that we have much of a choice."

From across the room came the voice of _Triton's_ communications officer. "Commander," Lieutenant Kira began, "Kara Thrace is requesting you take a look at the gun camera footage from our vipers. She says it's urgent."

* * *

"Hey, take it easy. Deep breaths. There you go. Stay in control." Sharon Valerii felt her co-pilot's hand grip her shoulder, which seemed to be having the desired effect of calming her down. The sight of two dozen gray-skinned vipers entering their cockpit's field of view helped give some sense of security. Floating at the center of their formation was a gray and black hulk of ship, easily dwarfing their raptor. It wasn't nearly as impressive a sight as a battlestar, but under the circumstances any military ship was a welcome view. As they approached, a male voice crackled over the wireless.

" _Boomer, this is Eamon actual. Welcome to the party. We've got a hundred souls who are very happy to see you. Take point. You'll be our eyes and ears, and we'll be your body guard. Sound like a deal?"_

Firestar class ships were the Colonial military's space borne equivalent of a frigate. They were deployed when the situation demanded firepower, but a battlestar was overkill. _Eamon_ was a good thirty times the length of their raptor and bristled with cannons and small gun batteries. The ship's hanger could accommodate a single raptor, which meant they had a home port. Sharon tried to avoid thinking about what happened to their original craft.

"It's a deal, _Eamon_ , and the feeling is mutual. Taking point." The soft hum of the engines vibrated through the ship as Sharon maneuvered their raptor to the spearhead of the formation. They'd been one of dozens of search and rescue ships scanning the area when all Hell broke lose. They didn't know much, most of the communication picked up over the wireless was confused and hectic. Just enough to know the planet was being hit hard. It was blind luck their raptor was within spitting distance of a military patrol at the time.

"See? All the comforts of home." Came the comforting voice of the man beside her once again. Sharon was always amazed by Karl Agathon's ability to keep a cool head when the situation was anything but cooperative. She managed to muster a weak smile.

" _Copy, Boomer. We received a coded communique from fleet headquarters just before we picked you up. We're bound for Artemis. Transfer navigation control to our ship and keep your eyes peeled."_

"Roger that. Slaving navigation control to you, _Eamon_." Sharon flicked a few switches in the cockpit and felt the ship's computer make minute course corrections. Navigation assistance was one of the many benefits networked computers provided the fleet. Raptors in particular would often slave their ship drives to larger craft they were meant to support. It allowed the crew on board to focus their attention on other tasks. Control could be taken back at a moments notice with a single switch.

"The scope's clear for now." Agathon reported. "Cylons are probably too busy dealing with the main fleet to worry about our little patrol."

"Lets hope it stays that way until we get to the station." Sharon replied. Despite all her training, she still had to work at keeping her nerves in check. It wouldn't be long until they were in actual combat, with things that weren't simulated bullets flying around them. She closed her eyes momentarily, gathering her thoughts. People were depending on her. She had the best training the Colonies could offer. She was ready for this. She opened her eyes, and glanced at Helo, briefly wondering if the same thing was going through his head.

The next hour was filled with a agonizing blend of tension and monotony. Over the wireless, reports from dozens of confused ships came in. Most were weighing if was worth the risk to make planetfall or to gun it for open space. They should be out there, Sharon thought. Agathon reassured her they could do the most good here. Guide the patrol back to port so they could save more lives down the line. Sharon wished to him there was more she could do.

"You're doing everything you can." He reminded her. "You're only human."

"Yeah. You're right Helo." The woman said. Sometimes she wished she was a little more.

* * *

"What in the name of the Gods are we looking at?" Tigh sorted through the pictures once more, half expecting to wake up in his bunk. He payed particular attention to a blurry, zoomed in shot of a massive blue ship shooting out beams of green light. "Are we sure these are real?"

"They were broadcasted in the clear from fleet headquarters. They're real." Adama poured over the first of the combat reports. In front of him, crewmen were busily shifting model ships on the strategic board to match the developing situation. _Galactica_ wasn't modern enough to have an electronic, real time situation display like most of the fleet. They still used plastic models to give a sense of what was going on.

"These are a hell of a throw from what the Cylons had the last time we saw them." The colonel gawked at shot he assumed came from a viper's gun camera. It depicted a small craft flying the same colors as the much larger vessel. It, too, was shown firing green pulses of energy. "How are we holding up out there?"

"Badly." Adama said stoically. "Canceron's defense fleet was overwhelmed almost immediately. The remaining ships are scattered and disorganized. Reinforcements jumped in to reinforce a few minutes later, but they were cut down just as fast." He paused, studying the board in front of him. "A lot of confusion out there. Nagala's ordered the fleet to pull back from the main fight, to regroup in outer orbit while the recon birds figure out what we're up against."

The commander watched his friends face drop with every sentence. "Dammit... It hasn't even been a day, and we've already lost how many ships?" As if finding new strength buried deep in his core, Tigh's expression lifted with newly found resolve. "The war's just getting started, we'll make them pay. Where are we headed?"

"We're to rendezvous with _Columbia's_ battle group at Semavatevi Point. Being the most populated civilian orbital in Delta, it would be a priority target for... our enemy." He glanced at the big board again. A number of battlestars near Canceron had been removed. "Knowing Admiral Nagala, she's going for some sort of pincer attack. Catch the enemy fleet in the middle, before they have a chance to spread out."

"Makes sense." Tigh remarked. "Still leaves a lot of ground uncovered, though. Semavatevi's right on the L5 point of Canceron's moon system. She's leaving a lot of stations for dead pulling back that far."

"The military's probably requisitioned every cargo ship and garbage scow with a jump drive to evacuate who they can." Even as he said it, Adama knew it would be a futile gesture. There was simply no chance they'd be able to get most people out of harms way in time.

"Somehow I suspect 'who they can' will consist of wealthy Caprican businessmen in luxury hotels." Tigh said with more than a hint of disgust. Adama didn't register Saul's comment, instead still staring at that board, lost in thought. Adama prided himself in his ability to keep a straight face. At being able to give or take any kind of bad news without showing any outward reaction. It was a testament to Saul Tigh's knowledge of him that he was able to see through it so keenly.

"Any word yet on what ships we lost?" Tigh asked, taking a guess as to what was preoccupying the commander's mind.

"No." Adama replied simply. "One bit of good news it they don't seem to be specifically targeting civilian ships. In fact, they seem content to ignore them as long as they don't get too close."

Tigh sighed, and deciding to push his luck, spoke again. "Bill, look... if one single viper comes flying out of that mess, it'll be Kara. If only because she's too frakking stubborn to let a few bullet holes do her in."

The commander looked over his glasses at Saul. "There's going to be a lot of people hoping it's their son or daughter flying that one viper."

This time, Tigh kept his thoughts to himself, know better than to press any further. That woman was like a daughter to the commander. If anything happened to her… Changing the subject, he held up the pictures again. "What do you make of these? It's been forty years, but… how could the toasters have changed so much?"

"This whole damn attack doesn't make any sense." Adama gripped the transmission from fleet headquarters. "The only reason we're as on the ball as we are is because our communications network still works. That should have been the first thing the Cylons hit. And why Canceron? Why one colony? Why not the shipyards at Scorpia, or Picon fleet headquarters?" His eyebrows furrowed. "Why did they hit random civilian ships around Canceron before the main attack? The only thing it accomplished was putting us on alert. Hell of a way to start a war."

"Maybe they don't have the resources the eggheads in the Ministry of Defense thought they did." Tigh suggested "Count our blessings."

"I don't think so." Adama said as he took the printout of the massive warship from Tigh. The ship looked too... different. Wrong. Alien. "I'm starting to wonder if the reason they didn't hit our satellites or shipyards is because they didn't know where to hit. I'm thinking the only reason they would have hit our civilian ships first is because they didn't have a choice. I'm starting to think…" Adama shut his eyes, wagering whether or not to put his thoughts into words.

"I'm starting to wonder if those aren't Cylons we're fighting right now."

* * *

The temperature of _Pegasus's_ CIC had plummeted. There was a bitter, palpable quiet. The only noise was the soft hum of the Dradis and whirring of the ship's engines. Overhead, a thousand returns overwhelmed _Pegasus's_ Dradis. Everyone knew what it meant. Nothing was on their scope but debris. There wasn't an Artemis station to regroup at anymore.

Cain silently contemplated the image of a massive blue warship being displayed on one of their monitors. She toyed with a small knife in her hand, flicking it open and closing it with the tip of her index finger. Artemis had been the center of military operations in Delta. It held over ten thousand personnel. It was their drydock, fuel depot… its destruction would massively complicate any long term defense. She overheard Belzen talking to someone over the phone.

"Alright. Good luck out there. CIC out." The XO's phone hitting its receiver seemed like a gunshot in the solemn atmosphere of the command center. "Raptor's away. They'll jump to Picon and report Artemis's destruction."

"Any sign of _Solaria_ and her fleet out there?" She asked, not taking her eyes off the recently received images of strange blue warships playing before her.

"The debris is small enough it'd be hard to tell them apart from everything else." Fisk replied. The red dots on his display had dispersed somewhat, indicating they were spreading out and hitting targets of opportunity. "But from their last known location we can assume they hadn't arrived at Artemis yet when it was hit, and they're still out there somewhere. Probably maintaining wireless silence just like we are."

Belzen spoke up again. "We haven't heard anything from Picon since we jumped in." He explained. "Canceron's satellite network is being targeted. It's making communicating back and forth conventionally more difficult. From what we've picked up on the wireless, the Cylon's have hit most major orbitals around the colony and are-"

"Those aren't Cylon ships!" Gina exclaimed, starring awestruck at the monitor. A few surprised heads turned to her. Suddenly, she looked nervous. "I mean, they can't be. Look at them. They don't look anything remotely like they did last time."

"They aren't Cylons." Cain said sharply. "This isn't their MO, these aren't their tactics. Cylons wouldn't beat around the bush by hitting one colony. They've given us every opportunity to coordinate and launch a counteroffensive." She pointed her knife at the monitor. "These… _things,_ aren't Cylon ships."

Silence resumed as the implications of Cain's statement sunk in throughout the room. Fisk was the first to speak. "If they aren't Cylon... and they aren't human..."

"Then they're something else." The admiral said, finishing his thought.

"That's... That shouldn't be possible." Gina said, her voice having taken on a slight tremor. "The galaxy is dead, we've never seen anything like..."

"Apparently not as dead as we thought." Cain replied simply. She closed her knife and walked up to CIC's strategic monitor, studying it like it held some lost secret. All of the fighting was still taking place over Canceron. Why only one colony? Using her hands she manipulated the display, zooming in on the planet, then again on their particular piece of space. "This means we're fighting an enemy we know even less about than we thought."

"What's our next move?" Fisk asked, watching the monitor alongside Cain. "It'll take time to hear back from Picon."

"There could be life pods buried in the debris." Belzen suggested. "We could have raptors search the debris field while we look for _Solaria."_

"Picon will send SR ships after our raptor reports to them." Cain said dismissively, still focusing on the strategic map. She zoomed in on a collection of red dots on the outskirts of Canceron's orbit. She flicked open her her knife again. "What can you tell me about these ships, Colonel?" She asked Fisk with renewed determination.

Fisk was on point. "They broke off from the main group after they wiped out Canceron's defense fleet. Every orbit they adjust their inclination. As far as we can tell, they've been tasked with wiping out the planet's orbital network."

"How many?"

"Their jamming makes it hard to get exact numbers." Fisk paused nervously as Cain twirled the knife from hand to hand. "But we'd estimate somewhere between three and ten ships. We don't know anything about their composition. If they're the heavies or medium cruisers we've encountered."

"Alright." She rested her hands on the edge of the display. "So we outnumber them." She touched a few controls, zooming out. "Artemis had one of the most sophisticated point defense systems in the Colonies, it would have taken dozens of nukes to brute force through it. These images suggest the... _aggressors_ , use some type of energy weapon instead." She paused, considering her options.

"They seem to be picking off our ships at range," She continued. "We can assume they prefer to keep us at a distance, picking us off before our batteries have a chance to connect." To curious expressions, she began tracing a line from their current position. "If we change our course here... We could use the planet's moon to slingshot us in their direction. Their orbit is counter to ours, so they should have a much harder time keeping the distance open." She crossed her arms, mind searching for something she missed.

"We don't know anything about their capabilities." Belzen interjected. "We could be completely outmatched and not even know it. _Solaria's_ battlegroup has to be nearby. We could combine forces with them, and then-"

"We don't have time." Cain's voice turned harsh. "We might not get this opportunity again. If we wait too long the enemy fleet could regroup and we'll have lost our opportunity to catch them off guard."

"Admiral, for all we know our weapons won't even scratch their hull."

"Our fleet destroyed a number of their fighters over Canceron. It's likely their technology is on the same order of magnitude as ours." Cain replied sternly.

Belzen's tone became more desperate. "That's if their heavy ships are built anything like their fighters. How do you know they won't see us coming the moment we change course?"

"The moon's a blind spot, it should hide us until we're coming right at them."

" _Should_ hide us. You're assuming an awful lot about their technology, Helena. They just casually obliterated the largest military installation in the system, and-"

" _Colonel."_ She yelled over him. "I'm well aware we know nothing about them. That's why we're striking _now,_ when we have the initiative. If we don't we'll be walking blind into our next major engagement. We need to know how they fight if we're going to have any chance of beating them. Would you rather risk four battlestars now, or twenty over Caprica?" The XO looked as if he were fighting to keep silent.

"This isn't up for debate, Colonel. I'm going forward with the attack. Colonel Fisk, coordinate the course change with the rest of fleet. Belzen, order all missile tubes loaded with ship-to-ship nukes. We'll hit them with everything we've got." Belzen hesitated, his expression locked on his long time friend.

" _Now,_ Colonel. If you can't handle orders, let me know, so I can find someone who can."

After a moment, Belzen picked up the command line on his side. Even on the mercury class, such sensitive phones were still corded. "Yes, sir."

Cain's hands gripped the console. She shut her eyes, channeling her frustration. The image of Gina's face played through her mind. Her breathing normalized. Belzen was a dear friend, but his job entailed staying focused on the smaller picture. If they wanted to survive, they'd have to take risks. Too many lives depended on people like them not blinking under pressure.

* * *

Boomer's heart leapt as she overheard Helo, now seated to the aft of the raptor, double checking his readings. " _Eamon,_ unknown contacts bearing two-two-three, karram one-seven-five. Range seventeen hundred clicks. Four boogies. Can you confirm?"

The radio crackled with life. " _Confirmed, We see them. Four contacts, fighter sized. Assume manual control and pull yourselves back. We'll take it from here."_

"Roger _Eamon_ , we'll watch your back. Stay safe." Sharon flicked a set of switches, returning manual control to the spacecraft. She felt herself being pushed forward as the raptor repositioned itself to the rear of the formation. _Eamon's_ hull filled their port, as did the two dozen blue specks of the viper's engines.

Word of Artemis station's destruction had shaken them hard. It was supposed to be their stronghold, Canceron's castle in the sky. Helo had friends stationed there, people he'd known since the academy. If it could be swept aside so easily, what did it mean for the rest of the Colonies? And the confusion only seemed to intensify. The wireless was filled with reports of strange ships unlike anything they'd ever seen. Then the report of Artemis's destruction came. Their formation had been in the process of deciding their next move when the unknown contacts appeared on their scope.

"I think they've noticed us." Helo stated, eyes laser focused on his readouts. "They've turned tail, looks like they're making a run for it."

" _Blue squadron, you're clear to break formation and pursue. Red squadron, stay back and cover us."_ A dozen of those small blue specks grew as the viper's engines roared, then zoomed away as their pilots jammed the throttle.

For the next few minutes, Boomer relayed the course and distance of the presumed hostile contacts. They maintained an almost straight line, and their engines didn't appear to have the same amount of push as the Vipers. The green dots on her Dradis slowly inched towards the red hue of the enemy fighters. _Eamon_ stayed close behind, its flak batteries eager to close into effective range.

"It's odd, don't you think?" Agathon remarked. "Every report we've received says Dradis isn't worth a damn around their ships, yet we've been tracking them no problem ever since they ran in front of our scope."

"We're probably close enough to cut through the interference." Boomer suggested. "Their smaller ships might not carry the same jamming equipment. Just don't question it too much, alright?"

Their conversation was interrupted by a new voice over the wireless. _"Eamon, Gator. We're about to enter combat range. Squadron, keep your heads cool. Having numbers on your side doesn't mean you get to be cocky."_

" _Blue squadron, this is Eamon actual. You are weapons free. We'll be acquiring lock and providing fire support momentarily."_ Boomer was feeling a little more in control as she listened closely to the combat chatter.

"They haven't even gone evasive." Helo thought out loud. "They should've been trying everything to shake us off."

A hundred kilometers away, Gator stared through her viper's heads-up display. One hand genly pulled down on her fighter's throttle, cutting her speed to give her a more accurate shot. Ever so gently, she positioned her viper's targeting carat in front the enemy craft's flight path. From this distance it was difficult to make out. _Eamon_ had read them reports of odd looking blue-colored ships. The target in front of her seemed to match the description. Suddenly, her carat vanished. Her craft beeped in distress. She glanced down to find her Dradis filled with static goop, no longer giving the viper the return it needed to unleash its guided weapons.

She glanced back up. The target had vanished.

" _Eamon, Gator. Dradis is being jammed. Ca-..quire...ually."_ The transmission came through a broken, distorted mess.

Helo frantically adjusted their raptor's equipment. "The interference just appeared out of nowhere! I can't compensate." Helo slammed his hand into the instruments in an act of futility. Outside the cockpit, Sharon could just barely make out tiny green beams cutting into the night.

Gator desperately threw the stick of her fighter, narrowly avoiding the beam of an enemy fighter on her tail. She heard screaming over the wireless as another one of her wingmen was vaporized. She swung herself around, catching one of the blue ships right in front her, pulled the trigger... a handful of stay shots connected, sending it spinning. She was just lining up her follow up shot when it all ended in an insant.

"They're being torn apart!" Agathon exclaimed. "It was a trap, they were leading us right to-" His voice was cut off by the raptor's sensors calling for their attention.

Helo was too busy fighting the Dradis to notice the radiation spike his instruments were reporting. He wasn't too busy to notice the new arrival making its presence known. "New contact, fifteen hundred clicks out. It's big. Shit, we have to get out of here."

"I'm spinning up the drive now." Boomer shut off the raptor's safety lock that would have prevented them from jumping without set coordinates. They didn't have time. The pair watched helplessly as a set of much larger green beams preformed a reenactment on _Eaman._ The frigate ceased firing back in seconds. Another few seconds after that, the ship exploded in a brilliant burst of light.

"FTL's still charging." Boomer said with a growing tone of desperation. She red-lined the raptor's engines in a hopeless attempt to make a run for it on conventional engines. The ship shook violently as something hit them, and the sound of venting gas echoed through the cockpit. "We're hit, engines are gone. Losing air pressure. Frak, FTL just needs a few more seconds." The officer sent out a prayer to the Gods, hoping for just a few more moments of time. But it wasn't meant to be. Another blast rocked the ship, setting off a new set of alarms. Thinking quickly, she threw off the glass cover of a large button on her control console, and punched it.

The last sound Sharon heard was the raptor's canopy being blasted off the front of the craft, and the changing pressure violently throwing them out. The cockpit's chaos vanished in an instant as the two were shot out of the raptor. Sharon caught a glimpse of their raptor being blasted to pieces as she held onto Helo for dear life. They'd have enough air to last a few hours. The chances of rescue were infinitesimal in that time frame, but better than their odds in the now exploded raptor. "Let's hope we look like a chunk of debris." Helo called out over his helmet.

"Don't talk too much." Sharon replied. "They might be able to pick it up."

The alien ship grew larger and larger. It had to be at least the size of a battlestar, Sharon thought to herself. Though she was never very religious, she was very dearly wishing the Lords of Kobol were watching over them at that moment. A bright light suddenly blinded her, and she felt the oddest sensation of her body being pulled forward. Something was drawing them towards the giant ship. Her friend was caught in the same beam. She tried to speak, but words failed her. Some entrance on the ship's hull opened, and they were drawn inside. Though horrified, she couldn't help but be awed at the close up view of the alien warship.

 _They aren't Cylons_. _They can't be._ She thought to herself. _But if they aren't Cylons..._ Her thoughts ceased as she lost consciousness.

* * *

" _I don't understand why we're sending one of our warships on some fool's errand. The outer worlds need every ship we've got."_

" _We think the payoff for this could be worth a lot more than a single ship. Besides, one ship won't make a difference."_

" _Then send someone else. My place is here, with my men. I can't abandon them for an expedition to some uncharted world. Without hyperspace beacons there's no telling how long we'll be out there."_

" _That's why we wanted you for this, John. You know how the Minbari think, and you know how to handle them on your own."_

" _All the more reason for me to be here, where I can make a difference on the front lines."_

" _You've seen the reports. You know what our odds look like. They aren't good. Our allies have thrown us under the bus. We're on the losing side of this, and that isn't going to change unless something drastic happens."_

" _At least tell me what we're doing out there. If I knew what this mission meant for Earth, it would go a long way to-"_

" _I'm sorry captain, that's need to know. The Lexington's repairs have been completed and she's being prepped as we speak. You'll be leaving port at 0400. Good luck out there, we have faith in you. Oh, and congratulations on the promotion, captain Sheridan."_

Captain John Sheridan was seated in the command chair of his ships bridge, hands resting anxiously in his lap. Those last words had been echoing through his head for the past month. He never asked for the _Lexington._ He never wanted Captain Stern's chair. The only reason he was sitting in it was the untimely death of the ships original commander at hands of the Minbari. He brushed the fabric at the neck of his uniform. That extra pip on his collar felt as if it were covered in blood every time he put it on.

"It's quiet today." He said aloud.

"You said that yesterday, sir." replied a pale skinned brunette seated behind one of the many control panels placed around the room.

"That I did, Lieutenant." Sheridan replied adamantly. "And I'll say it tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day we manage to give that Minbari fleet that's tailing us the slip."

"A whole week without sight or sound." Noted a bearded man not much younger than Sheridan. "Think they finally gave up?"

"Don't say that too loud, you'll jinx us." Sheridan said light heartedly. "That was a brilliant idea, doubling back like that. They probably thought they'd scared the wits out of us and turned tail for Earth. Good thinking, Jeremiah." The bearded man couldn't help but let a small bit of pride show on his face. Jeremiah had been _Lexington's_ chief tactical officer before Stern's death. Now, he was the ship's first mate.

"You know when you pretend to throw a a dog a bone, and it looks around frantically until it realizes its been had? I'd like to think that's the look on the Minbari's face right around now." He paused. " _Me_ jinx us? You're the one constantly reminding us how quiet it is."

"Just making sure we don't take this chance to catch our breath for granted. You know how much better the Minbari are at transiting beaconless hyperspace than us. For every step we take they could be three ahead of us." The captain grabbed the railings above his chair, and pulled himself up. He hated zero G. Especially after a month. It didn't help that the bridge of a Hyperion class cruiser was an uninviting place. The walls were an unremarkable gray, with consoles and control panels placed intermittently. A half dozen officers were on hand tending to the Earth Alliance warship.

"How much longer do those damned survey teams need surface side?" Sheridan said with more than a hint of frustration. "I've told those damned idiots that if the Minbari show up in orbit, we won't have time to pick them up before jumping into hyperspace."

"It would be a lot easier to be patient with them if we knew what in heaven it was they're _doing_ out there." Jeremiah remarked. "You know what my money's on? Some sort of ancient relic. Earth Force heard some juicy rumor about a crashed Vorlon ship or something, and plan to use it to fight the Minbari. I mean, come on, why else would they put _archeologists_ on a _military ship_ and send it on an expedition to uncharted space in the middle of a war?"

"It's not like the admiralty to chase rumors, not in times like this. We wouldn't be here unless they had something concrete. Or, at least, that's what I keep telling myself." He spoke that last sentence in a hushed voice. The crew didn't need to hear its commander complain about orders. It was bad for morale.

"Well, the admiralty didn't mention anything about an entire Minbari fleet keeping us company. Christ John, how many ships did they sic on a single cruiser?"

"At the very least, it's one less Minbari fleet hitting the outer worlds." Sheridan said. The boneheads had been tracking them almost since they left Earth Alliance space. It wouldn't be the first time intelligence had somehow leaked out. The captain shuddered at the thought of their encryption protocols somehow being cracked. Though, drawing that many ships away from the front lines gave him solace that they were doing _something_ worthwhile out here.

"It's a heck of a fan club. That's gotta mean we're on to something. Unless..." Jeremiah raised an eyebrow. "They're hunting some _one._ Perhaps some great human warrior who shamed them in battle. Maybe one... what was that name the Centauri told us they're calling you? Starkiller?"

Sheridan shifted his eyes from his first officer. He sighed. "A little dramatic for my tastes."

Jeremiah laughed. "I think its kind of catchy, Captain Starkiller."

Captain Sheridan shook his head. The destruction of the Minbari flagship had raised morale, at least temporarily. It seemed to have bought them some time as well. Instead of recklessly charging into battle and hitting everything in sight, they had changed tactics to a slower, more methodical approach. It meant they had more time to organize, but it also meant they had an even smaller chance of victory when the fight did come. He stared at the image of the green and blue orb they were orbiting, displayed on one of the navigation screens. Under other circumstances, he would have loved the chance to explore it himself. A great deal of its surface was covered in jungle, with oceans as far as the eye could see. And most importantly, almost perfect earth standard gravity. Unfortunately, the only thing this planet seemed to offer him now was confusion.

Orders were orders, just because he had to carry them out didn't mean he had to understand them. Sheridan gave the bridge to Jeremiah, and made his way down to his bunk for some much needed and rarely allowed rest.


	4. Eye of the Storm

Oh, look, an update! I wanted to have this be a _lot_ longer. I actually have half of the next chapter already written, but I'm too busy with midterms to finish it this week, so I wanted to split it into two chapters and post what I had. Hopefully this'll be cleaner than previous updates. As always, please feel free to point out contradictions with canon or any criticisms/comments.

* * *

Holloway had made plenty of visits to the pilot's briefing room in the past. They were almost always formal appearances, welcoming new squadrons aboard or fulfilling some official duty. He'd regretted never having the time to walk around his own ship of his own volition. It always felt like he was trapped in either CIC or his quarters, filling out paperwork. Now, arms crossed, watching the horrifying footage from Kara's gun camera, Holloway found himself wishing paperwork was still the number one thing he dreaded.

The alien looking fighters operated like nothing he'd ever imagined. Their weapons were astonishingly accurate, and almost guaranteed to be lethal when they connected. they didn't seem to have any visible maneuvering thrusters, appearing to magically alter its course without any thrust. Holloway nodded in approval when Kara brought one of the monsters down. Off in the distance, he could just make out the massive warships that had gutted _Triton_ mere hours ago. Aside from the occasional expletive, he watched in silence alongside Kara Thrace and a handful of other pilots. Right as the video concluded, Kara spoke up.

"They're not Cylons." She said simply. "I don't know what the frak they are, or where they came from, but they aren't Cylons."

"Well..." Holloway drug out the singular word, his mind still trying to decide how to process the revelation. "I'll be damned."

"When I was younger, my boyfriend at the time would always take me to watch those stupid alien flicks." Kara said with admonishment. 'Invaders from Beyond the Red Line,' ever seen it? It was the biggest pile of crap I've ever seen on a screen." The pilot's voice carried a hint of a laugh.

"I saw it three times, with some friends from the academy. We had a good laugh at the battle scenes. Even went back to see the sequel, where Humanity and the Cylons had to team up to stop the aliens." The commander took a seat in one of the front row chairs. He finally had an explanation for how their fleet had been cut through so easily back at the planet. At the same time, it raised countless more. Who, and _what,_ were they? What were they hoping to get out of attacking the Colonies? And most importantly... was it even possible to stop them?

"Have we heard anything on the wireless, commander?" Kara asked, trying to keep the concern out of her voice. She'd seen first hand how formidable their new enemy was. "How the rest of the fleet is holding up?"

Holloway slowly shook his head. "A lot of confusion out there. Though, as far as we can tell, none of the other colonies have been hit." He thought it best to omit the fact their forces were in the middle of a tactical retreat. They'd yet to score a single successful engagement against the invaders.

"That's good." Her worries didn't sound the least bit allayed. "What do we do now?"

"We're not in any shape to fight." The commander replied, resting his arms on the seat. He'd always wished they'd put a damn chair in CIC. "We'll be spending the next two days crawling to Aerilon for repairs"

"I mean _us._ The Colonies. Their warships barely closed into visual range. If we keep fighting them like they're Cylons, we'll be cut down every time. We need to-" Kara was cut off by the intercom demanding Holloway's attention. A feminine voice was requesting he call CIC.

"Pardon me." Holloway said as he stood up and grabbed the phone to the right of the briefing room's viewing monitor. He remembered watching his first briefings on projector screens, like they used in movie theaters. That was way back when he first joined the Fleet. Now they had these fancy displays built right into the walls. CAG's could manipulate them in real time to show any piece of data they desired.

"Holloway." He said into the receiver as if it were any other day. It was Sager's voice on the other end, sounding far more optimistic than earlier.

" _Dradis picked up a new contact a few minutes after we got it working."_ The relief in his voice was palpable. " _It's squawking Colonial IFF. Our database ID's it as the Battlestar Galactica."_

"The _Galactica?"_ Holloway replied, noticeably surprised. As pleased as he was they encountered another Colonial ship, he wondered how such an old battlestar could possibly be in any better shape than them. He noticed Kara's eyes light up the moment he uttered the ship's name. "Isn't that ship due for decommissioning in a few months? Is it even still combat rated?"

" _Our comm array must have been damaged in the attack. We can't get a clear channel to them just yet, but we're steaming towards them now. They've adjusted their own course towards us, so they know we're here."_

"Good, good. Maybe we'll get a solid line once we close the distance. I'm headed down there now. Holloway out." He hadn't even clicked the receiver into the wall when Kara bursted out.

"If Adama's on that ship, you're better off with him and _Galactica_ then a whole BSG." Her voice hadn't raised, but her words came out far more aggressively. The sudden shift caught Holloway off guard.

"Know someone on board?" He asked. Kara's sudden change in attitude didn't come as much of a surprise, given the stories he'd heard back in CIC, and the complaints from a very flustered CAG.

"Adama. _Commander_ Adama. Veteran of the Cylon war?" Her hands were clasped above her hips, eyes almost glaring at her superior officer.

Holloway wracked his memory for a moment, trying to recall the familiar name. "Adama... Adama! William Adama. There was an article about him in the Tauron Chronicle. Back when they announced _Galactica_ was to become a museum after her retirement, the story got a lot of hype. He seemed like an admirable man."

"He is." Kara said adamantly. "And he'll knock your lights out of you if he hears you talked crap about his ship."

To Kara's surprise, Holloway responded with a hint of a smile. "I'll keep that in mind." He said in an almost amused voice. Without giving his pilot a chance to speak again, Holloway turned away, and started making his way back to the heart of his ship. In the back of his mind, he still couldn't rid himself of the images of those nightmarish blue ships he'd seen dance across the room minutes ago.

* * *

"I'd think twice about simply accepting Colonial IFF anymore." Tigh remarked derisively in Lieutenant Gaeta's direction. _Galactica_ had detected the capital-sized Dradis return at the edge of their visible range less than ten minutes ago. Adama had immediately ordered a change of course to intercept them, and the friendly vessel had also adjusted course to meet them in the middle. The only hitch was the friendly contact had remained silent. "They still aren't responding to hails?"

"Still no response, sir." Came a tan-skinned Sagittaran woman. Petty Officer Dualla pressed a hand to her headset, continuing her attempts to make contact with the supposed Colonial ship.

"I've got a positive ID match in our records." Felix Gaeta proudly reported. "Their transponder is a match for the Battlestar _Triton,_ under the command of Jacob Holloway. She was stationed in orbit around Canceron during the initial attack."

William Adama could practically feel his heart skip a beat. " _Triton?"_ The familiar name felt like the answer to a prayer. He noticed Tigh's head snap around to face him. "Way out here? How?"

"It could be a trick." Saul warned suspiciously. "Even if it saw battle, communication is damn near impossible to knock out on a battlestar."

"Adjust course to bring us parallel with contact." Adama ordered. If it was a trap, he reasoned, best not run head first into it. "Dualla, demand they transmit identification codes immediately. Standby to broadcast our own."

" _Galactica_ to _Triton,_ please transmit identification codes immediately. Repeat, if you are receiving, please-" Dualla paused mid sentence, and a look of elation spread across her face. "Sir, I've got a line with _Triton._ They're transmitting codes now."

"I have them." Gaeta reported, comparing the data now displaying on his monitor with a sheet of paper nested on his overcrowded console. "Identification is a match. It's _Triton,_ sir."

"I was starting to get a little nervous." Tigh said with a sigh of relief. "Still doesn't explain what their doing in the middle of nowhere two million clicks from Canceron, without their fleet."

"Request direct line with _Triton_ actual. And patch me through." Adama said as he reached for his receiver. The grizzled commander fought to keep his emotions in check. Whatever happened to _Triton_ , it obviously involved combat. Was Kara alright? Was she even still alive? Knowing her, she'd be on the first wave of vipers out the launch lubes. He desperately needed to know, but couldn't bring himself to ask. This wasn't the time.

" _Triton, Galactica_ actual is requesting _Triton_ actual." Dualla droned into the headset. "Line is open." she said a brief moment later.

" _This is Triton actual."_ Came a deep voice crackling from the receiver. " _You have no idea how welcome a sight you are, Adama. Apologies it took us so long to get in contact, we're communicating via short range wireless. We weren't aware how badly our comm system was damaged."_

"Comm array's buried pretty deep in a battlestar." Adama's heart felt as if it had just dropped two decks. "You must have been hit pretty hard if they managed to knock it out."

" _Pretty hard is an understatement. Our battlegroup was the first line of defense over Canceron. Those things jumped in by the dozen and massacred our fleet. Their ships use some sort of jamming, our computers couldn't get a clear lock."_ Even over the wireless, Adama could sense the tension emanating from Holloway. He reasoned that, much like many other CO's across the fleet, this must have been the commander's first taste of actual combat.

"That meshes with the report's we've been getting." Adama confirmed stoically. "The whole combat zone's a clusterfrak. Are there any other survivors from your battlegroup?"

" _We don't know."_ Holloway's voice turned grim. " _The electromagnetic interference their ships gave off screwed with our nav computer. We weren't able to calculate a jump to the same area of space. I suspect other ships made it out, but we have no way of knowing where they are or what their status is."_

"I would assume you would have jumped to safety by now if you could have." _Galactica's_ commander stated more than asked.

" _You'd assume correct. We've been patching up what we can, but if we tried jumping again there's a very good chance the ship will tear itself apart."_

The closest drydock that wasn't floating in a million pieces would be around Aerilion, Adama figured. "Nearest safe harbors a good few days away by sublight. Chances are you'll be intercepted long before you get to safety."

" _It's not as if we have much say in the matter."_ Said Holloway. " _The fleet's going to have its hands too full to send an escort."_

"That long at sub-light, in the middle of a war zone?" Tigh said incredulously. "They'll never make it in one piece."

"Commander Holloway," Adama began. "We have enough room on _Galactica_ to hold the entirety of your crew. We could have raptors start ferrying your people back and forth, leaving _Triton_ with a select few personnel." Transferring so many hundreds of people on something as small as a raptor would take time, but with both ships working in tandem to make it happen, the commander estimated it would take only ninety minutes to save eight hundred lives. And while he promised itself it wouldn't cloud his judgment, one life in particular made this plan of action very attractive.

After a few moments of listening to Holloway consult with his men on the other end, his voice cracked through the wireless again. " _That's extraordinarily generous, commander. We'll start shoveling crewmen into our raptors immediately."_

"And we'll have our birds ready to take their place the moment the take off." Adama replied. "In the mean time, I think a close formation would be best to cut down on flight time. We're still bound for Semavatevi Point, if you'd be willing to accompany us for an hour or so."

" _We can swing that. Be aware our ship will have a hard time keeping pace."_ Holloway's voice had perked up considerably. Given his role as the CO, he would have to stay with _Triton_ as part of its skeleton crew. Adama knew this meant his relief had to come from ensuring the safety of his people, a trait he could admire in a man. " _One last thing, Commander, if I may... You fought in the first Cylon war. You've tangled with them before. These things... You must have seen them over the wireless..."_

"We're not fighting Cylons." Adama said with a tone of finality, leaving no room to doubt his certainty. "Which means I'm just as in the dark as you are."

" _We were starting to suspect the same thing."_ Holloway replied after a moment of silence. " _I have to coordinate the evacuation. My people will be in contact with yours."_

"You did good out there, Holloway." Adama stated. "Take it from a vet. Adama out." With those words, he clapped the device back into it's cradle, and turned to Dualla. "Get me a manifest of _Triton's_ crew. I want an overview of _Triton's_ condition transmitted to us, Lets get up to speed on how badly she's beat. I also want every corridor on decks E and G cleared out and set up for our guests, we're going to need the room. Tell Doctor Coddle prep the medical bay for inbounds."

"Right away, sir." Dualla said, already preparing to put herself in touch with the DC teams onboard _Triton._

"Would you like a copy of that crew manifest, sir?" Colonel Tigh questioned. It didn't take a great leap of logic for Adama to understand what his friend was hinting at.

"No. That won't be necessary." Adama said dismissively. He leaned in close to the balding man, and gestured towards CIC. " _They_ don't get to ask for a crew manifest. If I give myself that unique privilege, what does it say to them?" The commander turned away to discuss something with Gaeta, shutting down any further discussion of the topic with Saul.

Had Adama been more focused on his friend, he would have seen the Colonel mutter something under his breath as he shook his head. Tigh had always respected Adama's resolve, but sometimes, his friend needed to recognize when it was working against him. Determined to solve the old man's mystery for him, Tigh marched over up to the communications panel Dualla was seated by. He put a hand on her shoulder, and lowered his head to her level.

"I need a favor." The colonel said in a hushed voice.

Dualla gasped while a hand clutched her heart. Evidently, he'd taken her off guard. "Yes... sir?" The communication's officer asked with confusion obvious in her expression.

"I need you to get me a pilot manifest from _Triton,_ as up to date as they have." He replied. "And I want you to go _directly_ to their CAG. Not Holloway, and not a word to the commander." Dualla's eyes shifted around the room as Tigh explained her mission. He wondered what was going through the poor woman's mind. "This is low priority, alright? So get everything else the old man wants squared away before you touch this. When you have it, report directly to me."

"Um..." Dualla looked if she felt like she was missing something rather important. Tigh could barely overhear a very confused man speaking through her headset. "Alright... I can do that. But why the secrecy... sir?"

Tigh shot a glance at Adama, who was in the middle of being given a more complete report of _Triton's_ status by Gaeta. Looking back at the worried expression on Dualla's face, Saul figured he owed the woman at least some kind of explanation.

"There's a pilot on that ship who holds a very special place in the commander's heart." Tigh explained. "He's had some family problems in the past, we'll leave it at that. So having this woman who holds no reservations about their bond is a godsend to the man. And if she was on the front lines when all this broke out... He doesn't know what's happened to her. And it's tearing him up inside."

Dualla listened patiently to the colonel's explanation, nodding softly in understanding when he finished. "I'll get it done, sir." The petty officer turned back to her station, allowing herself to be consumed with her work.

Tigh smiled and patted the woman on her shoulder as he thanked her. Anastasia was alright in his book.

* * *

Karl Agathon woke up feeling as if he'd had an extra dozen or so drinks the night before. The entire room felt like it was spinning, and his head throbbed madly. He reached to grab it, but his limbs refused to move. He tried opening his eyes, but there was a blinding light forcing them shut. Slowly coming to his senses, he tried again to move his arms. He was bound to something. Bit by bit, Helo felt his memory coming back to him. The raptor, the patrol, the trap... The screams over the wireless as _Eamon_ melted away in seconds. They'd been blasted out of the sky. Sharon's quick thinking had saved them. _Sharon. Where's Sharon._ He cried out for her. No response. No echo, either. The room he was in couldn't be that big. Agathon remembered something drawing him into the ship. The unnatural feeling of having his body pulled by nothing. His mind finally settled on the only reasonable conclusion.

 _I've been captured._ He thought to himself. _I've been captured by..._ His thoughts were interrupted by the noise of something mechanical sliding, followed by the sound of footsteps. But they weren't the obvious clanking he would have expected from robotic centurions. It sounded like any average person stepping on hard floor.

Helo struggled to open his eyes, but wasn't greeted by a metal monster. There was no red eye shifting side to side like he'd had drilled into his head a thousand times. Instead, he could barely make out the silhouette of a tall figure standing against the lights. He didn't seem all that much wider than he did, and Helo struggled make out the outline of what appeared to be fabric hanging from the figure's arms. It was wearing some type of curved helmet that wrapped around its head. From his angle, his captor was shrouded in darkness, making it impossible to get a clear view. He starred at the figure, despite any pain the lights were bringing to his eyes, incapable of understanding. His captor obviously wasn't Cylon. And if he wasn't Cylon...

"Who are you?" The figure asked in a deep, distinctly male voice. The question hit Agathon like a blow to the head. It was speaking perfect Caprican. It _sounded_ human. How in the worlds? His mind struggled to come up with a response, when a jolt of sharp pain shot through his arms and legs. His entire body convulsed uncontrollably. Moments later, the electric sensation subsided. He gasped for air.

Agathon's mind pulled a very particular set of training to the forefront of his memory. SERE. _Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape._ The Fleet drilled it into every crewman to some extent. How to act in the event of capture. It emphasized the importance of the first few moments. If you couldn't make a break for it in the initial minutes, your chance of escape at all went down drastically. Unfortunately, in space he couldn't even humor the possibility of escape. He'd already failed the first two letters by being captured, and the last was out of the question. That only left him resistance. On the other hand, they taught that if you wanted to survive, you had to play ball to some limited extent. The figure repeated his question.

"Karl Agathon." He coughed out. "Lieutenant. Serial number PK 789-" He felt the familiar jolt of pain blast through his body, more intense than last time. It took longer for the pain to subside. His teeth seemed to tingle.

"Who are _your people."_ His tone grew harsher. Are you a mining colony? Research outpost? What is the purpose of your presence in this system?"

"Our purpose? Helo replied, turning the question over in his head. "This is _our home._ "

Ignoring Helo's last statement, the figure switched topics. "This system lacks hyperspace beacons. Did you destroy them in an attempt to hide your presence?"

Each question seemed to make less sense than the last. If his captor really was an entirely different species, their method of questioning might be totally alien to him. Drops of sweat dripped off his brow. "I don't understand what you're asking." He said hopelessly.

Clenching his teeth didn't work anymore. He cried out. Helo lost his sense of time as the pain left no nerve untouched. The figure remained silent and unmoving throughout the torment. Finally, the sensation subsided once more.

"We observed Starkiller's ship make its way towards this system. We know you've had contact with the Earth Alliance recently. The question is, what could Earth possibly have to gain from such a remote colony?"

For a moment, Agathon forgot his growing pain. His eyes shot open. "The _what?"_ He asked in shock and confusion. Those obviously weren't the words his captor was looking for.

Karl Agathon could barely tell when the machine stopped this time. His skin had gone numb. His hands and legs twitched intermittently.

"I swear. I don't know anything about what you're talking about." Helo's breath was giving out every other word now. "We don't know anything about an Earth. It's just a story to us."

The figure paused his questioning. Agathon wondered if his own words were surprising the alien. He'd never been much of a believer in the Scrolls, not like his family was. His belief in the Gods had shifted back and forth throughout his life. Earth was just another piece of the mythology. The name hardly ever came across his mind. Now, not only did an Earth apparently exist, they had somehow dragged the Colonies into their war. Seizing his opportunity, Helo spoke to the cloaked figure again.

"We've lived on these worlds for thousands of years. Alone." He felt no shame in his pleading voice. "We've never even encountered other life until now. Why did you attack us?"

The figure appeared to shake its head. "If you were truly that isolated, why would an Earth warship bring one of its greatest warriors here? It's very simple. The more difficult you make this, the more pain you will experience. I've had a lot of practice working with humans. With the right techniques, we can maintain life for weeks... even months, in this condition."

Helo remained silent. He could barely muster up the energy to speak, even if he had something to say. He briefly wondered how long his mental state could hope to hold out. If he could really last that long without giving away every secret he knew. If he had a suicide pill, now would have been the time to pop it.

"We'll allow you some rest." Said the figure in a disappointed voice. "Your friend has already proven far more cooperative, anyway. She is much more responsive to our coercion. She'll probably suffer less, in the end. You could learn from her."

Helo heard the footsteps grow quieter in the distance. With his last gathering of strength, he opened his eyes long enough to catch a glimpse of the figure as it passed through the light. It was draped in a black outfit, with with a purple line running up its back. As the finale for his first session of torment, he caught the briefest image of back of his captors head. It wasn't wearing a helmet. It had bones jutting out the back of its head, curving around the back and above it's scalp. There wasn't a shred of doubt left in the lieutenant's mind. The Twelve Colonies were at war with something alien.

* * *

The bridge of a Minbari war cruiser was a much quieter affair than its human counterpart. Despite their immense size, a Sharlin made due with a command staff of only four. Absent were the dozens of displays plastered along the walls, feeding information to the crew. Instead, the room was adorned with the markings of the Wind Sword clan, one of the longest lasting and proudest in the entire Warrior Caste. To the back of the room, the Wind Sword's emblem dominated the entrance. It consisted of a sword overlaid on a round sphere, with a diamond placed before the sword's tip. The sphere once merely represented Minbar, homeworld of the Minbari Federation. After their kind spread to the stars, it came to stand for the entire Minbari race. The diamond was an ancient Minbari stand in for a star. To the Wind Swords, it represented other races that would inevitably eye their race with jealousy and hate. The sword kept the diamond at bay, demonstrating the Wind Sword's intent to defend Minbari kind from any enemy that would threaten their way of life.

From the front of the command center, the lofty form of Alyt Lorann stood upon a field of stars. Minbari ships lacked the simple electronic view screens of human ships. They possessed something far more intricate. With a single command, the entire front of the room transformed into a three dimensional view of the entire playing field. It engulfed Lorann, allowing him a birds eye view of the combat area with a few turns of his head. The captain played back the footage of their last engagement. Something wasn't making sense to the veteran Minbari commander. These human vessels had an unfamiliar configuration, and their weapons appeared to be basic kinetics. The human strike craft had pursued their bait right into a predetermined patch of space. After exiting hyperspace, their enemy had been torn apart within seconds. With a wave of his arm, the theatrics ceased.

"That exit from hyperspace was unacceptably imprecise." Lorann said in agitation. "The last time we laid this trap, we exited so close to the human fleet our hyperspace wake alone destroyed some of their ships."

"The lack of beacons makes it extremely difficult to get precise coordinates." Replied a female voice seated at the ship's tactical station. Khala. His right hand. She was a Kor, an officer specialized in a multitude of ship functions. Like Lorann, her forehead was marked with a set of brown dots that made up the Wind Sword clan's markings. The natural ebb and flow of hyperspace turbulence made navigating the beaconless area of space a nightmare. To make matters worse, the system was comprised of multiple stars, which was wreaking havoc with their navigation systems. Stars were massive enough to flood local hyperspace with the equivalent of waves, potentially knocking a vessel off course. The Minbari were native to a binary system, and had more than enough experience with hyperspace travel to compensate, but the star system was still keeping the navigators on their toes.

"Strange the humans would attempt to settle such a turbulent system." Lorann remarked, voicing his curiosity. "And without any beacons? I wouldn't know whether to admire their bravery or pity their stupidity." The captain raised his hand, and with a flick of his wrist, a holographic model of the planet below came to life in front of him. They were on the world's far side now. To Lorann's bewilderment, there was nothing small about this outpost. Great fields of light stretched across every landmass. They were obviously cities, but that shouldn't be possible...

Lost in his own mind, Lorann failed to notice one of his subordinates patiently waiting to be acknowledged. As the captain raised his hand to manipulate the image, he caught the smug looking man out of the corner of his eye. "Tarreck." Lorann said in a clipped tone, joining his hands at his waist. "Have you made progress?"

"Unfortunately... I have not." Tarreck said after bowing to his superior. The smile the interrogator wore on his face after his sessions always made Lorann uneasy. "It's been so long since I've worked with a human. I was a bit over eager. Though I'm sure it will make them more cooperative next time." Tarreck's grin grew ever so slightly. "So far, I've made the most progress with the male. The female merely remained silent for the duration. She seems to have an uncharacteristically high tolerance for pain."

"Has he revealed anything about the nature of this system?" Lorann asked, already prepared with his most pressing question.

To Lorann's surprise, Tarreck looked somewhat uneasy at his query. As if he was deciding whether or not he even had anything worth reporting. "He's claiming he isn't aware of Earth's existence. Or even the existence of other races." Seemingly unsatisfied with his own reply, Tarreck continued. "He's unlike other humans I have questioned. He didn't spit in my face or plead for his life. There wasn't so much defiance, more confusion. And, while this may not be of importance... His uniform is unfamiliar. It had no Earth markings, and what emblems it did have I don't recognize."

Lorann processed his interrogator's report, connecting it with what pieces of information he'd gathered on his own. Their fleet had stumbled upon this system while tracking an Earth warship. Their intel indicated it was the very ship harboring the great human warrior, Starkiller. The supposed coward who had destroyed their flagship, the Drala Fi', with a few well placed mines. One of the senior members of their clan, a respected higher-up of the Warrior Caste, had made it his own personal crusade to avenge the warship. Alyt'sa Abidor had taken thirty of their finest ships on a quest for vengeance that seemed to be leading nowhere, when they stumbled upon a number of human ships. They appeared unarmed, and Lorann had considered protesting their destruction, but knew Abidor would only rebuke him with the need to hide their presence. Once they had located the source of human ships in the system, Abidor had ordered an all-out assault on the colony.

The entire conflict had been extraordinarily unusual. Normally, humans concentrated their fleet in one place, giving them the greatest chance of closing the distance and fighting back effectively. Here, human reinforcements had been steadily funneling in until recently. Lorann almost cursed the swiftness of the initial battle, desiring a chance to examine the unusual human warships in greater depth. They appeared to be using some unfamiliar form of jump drive. The orbital presence was also unusually high. Hundreds of satellites, dozens of stations of varying size... No remote colony would have this much infrastructure. And then came the revelation displayed before them.

"Look at their world." Lorann said, gesturing towards the holographic projection. "Look at the size of their cities. There must be billions living among them."

"Billions?" Tarreck asked in disbelief. "That can't be right. Humans have only been a space faring race for the blink of an eye. They couldn't possibly have such a sprawling world this far from their home."

"And yet there it is, defying all reason." After dismissing the holographic with another flick of his wrist, Lorann turned to face Tarreck. "Is there any way, _any_ possible way, he could be telling the truth? Could these be a separate faction of humans from the Earth Alliance?"

"How could that be possible?" Tarreck asked "And if it was, how would they have simply forgotten so much about their past?"

"I don't know." Lorann replied honestly. "But it's enough to make clear something very peculiar is going on."

"Why does it matter? It doesn't change anything." Tarreck said matter of factly. "Even if they're physically separated, they're still spiritually identical. They still share the same cowardly disposition that murdered Dukhat. They deserve the same fate."

"That's not for either of us to decide, Tarreck." Lorann said, shrugging off his subordinates comment. "Our ship's mission was information gathering. This seems like a significant enough discovery to bring to Abidor's attention." Raising his hand, Lorann manipulated a set of controls that appeared before him on command. A few flicks of the wrist later, a video feed of the human male locked in a holding cell deep within the ship displayed. "I'd like to speak with this one myself. You said he was the more cooperative of the two?"

"To an extent, yes. Though I don't see what it would accomplish." Declared Tarreck.

"It might help me give a more complete report to Abidor when we make contact with him." Lorann explained. "As your the only one on the ship who can speak the human language, I'll be summoning you to his cell shortly. For now, you're dismissed."

With a brief bow, Tarreck turned and left the bridge. The man's profession had always disgusted Lorann. What honor was there in tormenting an opponent who was already defeated,especially when there were ways to extract the information directly from the mind painlessly. While he could see the necessity, Tarreck seemed to take an unnatural joy in his work. The whole war left a similar taste in the captain's mouth, though it wasn't his place to say. This possible revelation, however, complicated matters.

"Change course for the flagship." Lorann ordered as he dismissed the star field all together. "Inform me the moment we are in communication range with Alyt'sa Abidor. The ship is yours, Khaleer." Lorann nodded at the female tactical officer and departed the spacious command center. By Valen's name, he would get to the bottom of what was going on.

* * *

The tension that had permeated through _Galactica's_ CIC hours ago had given way to a far more ordered routine. The whole command staff was laser focused on coordinating _Triton's_ evacuation. Dualla had been skillfully juggling the raptors of both battlestars every five minutes, the amount of time it took for one wave to launch and the other to land. As of now, they'd managed to haul roughly two hundred men and women onto _Galactica._ They were being stuffed into cargo holds, empty corridors, anywhere they had room.

"When we've relocated _Triton's_ crew, we'll jump a raptor to Picon." Adama checked his watch, pleased to see their rate of transfer was keeping pace with his personal estimate. "Give them an update on our situation. Semavatevi is too close to the combat zone to be a safe drop off point. Depending on our next set of orders, we could be stuck with them for awhile."

"I don't know if I'd feel comfortable going into combat with seven or eight hundred stowaways clogging up the hallways." Tigh remarked.

"The alternative is wasting a day crawling to Aerilion ourselves." _Galactica,_ being a relic of the first Cylon war, hadn't used its own jump drives in nearly twenty years. There was some amount of danger involved in warming them back up, and without the sophisticated nav computers the more modern battlestars came equipped with, a ship had to calculate most aspects of the jump manually. "We might not have that kind of time."

"Colonel!" Called out Petty Officer Dualla. "Could you help me double check these manifests? I want to make sure I'm accounting for all their raptors properly."

Adama shook his head as the Colonel complied with the communication officer's request. She should have damn well known how to do such basic tasks by the time she was assigned to his ship. The young woman had shown talent managing the evac up to this point, it was possible she was just nervous. Oddly, Tigh seemed to give the woman a rather large grin as they spoke, and he parted from her with a tight grip on the shoulder. As Tigh made his way back to CIC's central console, Dualla called for his attention.

" _Triton's_ CAG is requesting to speak with Actual about an urgent matter."

"Their CAG _?"_ Adama replied curiously. If there was an issue, it would have made sense for _Triton's_ CAG to go their own CO. Why in the worlds would they need his attention? "Go ahead and patch them through." He said, removing the phone from its receiver.

After a thumbs up, Adama spoke into the device. "This is _Galactica_ actual. I understand you have an urgent matter to discuss?"

"I do, sir." Came an intensely familiar female voice. Even over the garble of the wireless, Adama recognized it almost instantly. He gripped the console, hoping against hope he was actually hearing her. "I need to discuss what I'm hearing."

"What you're hearing?" Adama repeated with agitation. Then, a wide smile crept across the commander's face. "And what do you hear, Starbuck?" He questioned without skipping a beat.

"Nothing but the rain." Kara replied in turn. The greeting had a long history stretching back to the very beginnings of their friendship. A massive weight felt as if it was being lifted off Adama's shoulders as a mix of relief and jubilation washed over him.

"Then grab your gun, and bring the cat in." He said, finishing their little game. "Starbuck... Kara... It's good to hear your voice. I always knew you'd make CAG one day."

"Well, when the five people ahead of you on that big board get blasted out of the sky... it does good things for your career." Kara replied, feeling a tinge of guilt at her own joke. "Do you know what it's like out there?"

"I have an idea." Adama said. "I'm looking at pictures of your ship right now. It's a fraking miracle you people made it out in one piece."

" _Triton's_ a tough ship." Kara stated proudly. "Not as tough as _Galactica,_ but..."

"It's a tough ship alright." Adama said agreeably. "If it's been able to put up with Starbuck for this long."

"Those things, sir..." Kara said, swinging the conversation back. "I fought them myself. I killed one of them. Our forces can't keep charging in like we're dealing with regular old baseships."

"The war's young." Said the commander. "We'll hit the bastards back so hard they'll be running back to whatever hell they came from with their tail tucked between their legs." He smiled again and added, "You think they have tails?"

"Like in that stupid movie you made me agree to see with Zak? No, I don't think it was a documentary."

"Sir!" Called out Lieutenant Gaeta with great distress. Adama lowered the wireless. "Dradis contacts! At the edge of our scope, I can't tell how many. No IFF. Size is difficult to make out, but I'd say it's comparable to us."

"Do they see us?" Tigh asked urgently.

"They must." Replied Gaeta, examining his rotating display, which was beginning to fizzle with static. "Blips are getting stronger. Dradis is being flooded by electromagnetic waves. They're definitely coming at us."

"I have to go." Adama said into the wireless just before slamming it back in.

* * *

"Sir, wait-" Kara blurted into the receiver just as she hurt the definitive click. She grabbed her hair, pacing back and forth in the pilot's briefing room. She knew damn well they wouldn't stand a chance against those things, not in their condition. Adama was the wild card. Would he stay and get themselves killed too, or make a run for it? Wracking her brain, she fought to come up with something, anything. Charging into the alien ships wouldn't work. And they weren't fast enough to escape.

If they wanted to survive, they'd have to do something radical. Something outside the box. Something...

Kara's eyes widened as the epiphany struck her. With the clock ticking, she blasted out the open bulkhead, and raced to make it to CIC before Holloway and Adama came to their final decision.

* * *

Commander Holloway gave a drawn out sigh as he watched the raptors zip back on forth over the Dradis display. Their crippled ship would cease to be a burden on _Galactica_ before long, and back on course for Aerilion. They'd be operating with a crew of no more than eighty, just enough to keep vital functions going. Sager had already completed the process of sifting through _Triton's_ crew manifest. The Colonel had the honor of handpicking which crewmen would have the privilege of staying with the ship. From the start, it had been a forgone conclusion Holloway himself would be among them.

"Shouldn't be more than an hour." The colonel said optimistically. "With any luck we'll be giving some unlucky engineer at drydock a headache in a couple days. Ship's more banged up than my first car."

"If we make it that long." replied _Triton's_ CO. Their combat readiness would be almost nonexistent for the duration of their flight to Aerilion. A half dozen pilots would be staying with the ship, as well as a handful of gun crews to man the ships weapons manually. Sager would be doubling as the ship's fire control officer. They'd be worthless in a fight, but that would've been true even fully staffed. If trouble found them, their backup plan consisted of making a dash for the remaining raptors and using them to jump to safety. From inside the ship, if need be.

"We'll make it." Sager replied reassuringly. The XO appeared to be holding up better than the commander. Now that some time had passed, and the adrenaline was beginning to leave Holloway's veins, the cold reality of their situation was beginning to take a hold of the man. They'd narrowly escape being slaughtered. The Twelve Colonies were in the middle of an all out war, possibly for their very survival, with an enemy they knew nothing about. The thought terrified the newly veteraned commander.

"I considered evacing every soul." Holloway confessed with a modicum of guilt carried in his voice. "Having the ship put on autopilot for drydock, then jumping the crew straight to Picon. Or Scorpia. Somewhere safe."

"The brass would have your career in front of a firing squad." Sager said flatly. "Couldn't risk _Triton_ being captured or infiltrated."

"I know." Holloway said in a low voice. His hands were clasped together, resting on the command console. He feared his face betrayed too many of the unwelcome thoughts bubbling up from his mind.

"Looking for a way off the ship?" Sager ventured in a more accusatory voice than he intended. To the Colonel's surprise, the question was greeted with a nod.

"I'm cursing myself for daring to even have the thought." The commander replied. Holloway caught himself finicking with his hands as he spoke, and gripped the console in an effort to stop himself. "I thought I was ready for actual combat. We spend the last decade or two having every thought and reflex drilled into our head, then the moment actually comes..." His voice drifted off turning his gaze back towards the Dradis display, unable to meet Sager's eyes.

For a painful few seconds, there was silence between the two weary officers. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, Sager placed a hand on Holloway's shoulder. Sager's grip was firm, but his voice remained low. "You got us out of there alive. That's all you could have possibly done. You- _we_ handled ourselves well back there."

"We knew there were a lot of civilian ships out there." Holloway replied. "Some of them couldn't be too far from us. I thought about ordering a few of our birds to seek them out and get them to safety. But I was afraid it would have left us that much more defenseless. Then nothing came at us."

Unsatisfied, Sager took his hand from Holloway's shoulder. He turned to lean on the command console beside them. "Remember those officer training classes back in Perkinston?" He began as he crossed his arms. Perkinston was one of the larger cities on Picon, home to one of the most acclaimed universities in Colonies. "How they'd have old vets from the Cylon war come in and give us lectures about what it was like to be in the middle of a real shooting war. There was one... I can't recall his name, but it doesn't matter. He was an engineer on the _Columbia,_ the original one. He said the hardest part of what comes after the battle is living with the decisions you made during the chaos."

Sager glanced at the crew busily going about their tasks, double checking no one was nearby. "I've been running through the battle in my head. I decided which sections got fire suppression teams, which were vented into space..." The XO's own voice was beginning to incorporate a tinge of regret, an emotion Holloway had never observed in the man before. "Compared to that engineer, I'm lucky. I had a computer to crunch all the numbers and make a lot of the tough calls for me. That doesn't stop every one of those red dots from haunting me."

"What if it's not what I did?" Holloway asked, leaning on his hip to face Sager. "I have a family back on Tauron. I made the call to jump away, and to keep our fighters to ourselves." Finally, the commander raised his eyes, allowing them to meet Sager's. "What if I'm just using 'I had to' as an out? To tell myself I didn't have a choice? Because the more I think about, it... the more I'm terrified by the idea of leaving my children without a father. What if next time, what keeps the ship afloat doesn't happen to coincide with what's best? And I get more people killed in the long haul?"

Sager raised his voice, ready to counter his commander, when a loud set of chirps rang from the Dradis console. "Contact!" came a concerned voice from across the room. Holloway and Sager straightened instantly as they turned their attention to the Dradis console. Something was making its presence known at the edge of their visible range. "I can't get a clear return, but it's definitely there." The brown-haired man looked up from his display. "The readings are consistent with what we saw from the ships over Canceron. It's on a much smaller scale, but it's unmistakable. They're not Colonial." He finished grimly.

"Looks like our new acquaintances finally found us." Sager remarked, stepping down from the central command console to look over the Dradis operator's shoulder. The lieutenant looked more than a little white in the face. "Do we have any idea how many?" The XO asked urgently.

"It's about as difficult to get a picture of them as it was last time." The lieutenant replied frantically. "But there's significantly less EM interference clogging up our Dradis. Going by what readings we're gathering and the amount of interference compared to our previous encounter, I'd say it's a much smaller strike group. Maybe a handful of ships, if that."

"What about an estimate to interception?" Holloway inquired, knowing full well the lieutenant might not have the foggiest idea. "Give us an educated guess."

"Educated guess?" The officer repeated, still studying the readouts in front of him. Standing behind him, Sager watched the display intermittently fizzle with static. "Maybe twenty minutes, if the range they started shooting at before was their max. They're trailing us, so that buys us a few minutes."

"Trailing us?" Holloway asked in shock. "We're heading _towards_ Canceron. If they're trailing _us..."_

"Then our line's even more fraked than we thought." Sager finished as he resumed his regular position opposite of Holloway, to the aft of CIC's central console.

"We don't have enough time to finish the evac." Holloway admitted in horror. "Kira, get _Galactica_ on the-"

" _Galactica_ just hailed _us,_ sir." Kira interrupted. "Adama is requesting to speak with Actual directly."

"Put him on, and patch it through the speaker." Holloway barked out. He fought to maintain his cool as he held the receiver to his mouth. "This is _Triton_ actual. I'm assuming you're seeing the same thing we are."

" _They might have tracked our communications."_ Adama suggested as his voice came to life over the wireless. " _It doesn't matter. We need a plan, now. There isn't enough time to finish the evacuation."_ He said flatly. The commander's cool demeanor in the face of despair impressed Holloway, who'd been on edge ever since their last jump.

"We have an idea of what they look like on Dradis." Holloway stated hopefully. "We've assessed they aren't terribly numerous. We could potentially fight them on equal footing."

" _With the condition Triton's in, you wouldn't last ten minutes into a real fight."_ Adama said, shutting Holloway down. " _I'm not going to lie to you commander, we don't have a lot of options."_

"We could get a raptor to Picon, have them send reinforcements." Jacob rebuked, not giving up so easily.

" _There isn't time."_ The commander said instantly. _"We're warming up our FTL computers now. I have a favor to ask you, Jacob. And it isn't an easy one."_

"What can we do, Adama?" Holloway asked nervously. He rubbed his forehead. A fine layer of sweat was starting to accumulate. He was sure he wasn't the only person in CIC.

" _We don't have the time to calculate a jump manually."_ Adama began. " _One of my officers has informed me your ship is equipped with a networked navigation computer. You should be able to calculate a jump for us, and transfer the data over in a fraction of the time."_ Holloway could feel the regret in Adama's voice, both commanders hoping against hope there was some strand they were missing. " _It's a hell of a lot to ask..."_

Holloway nodded at Sager, who instantly sprang into action, rallying the ship's navigation officer. "We'll have the coordinates transferred over to you as soon as possible." Holloway replied, more sternly than he expected of himself. "And we'll start making preparations to attempt a jump ourselves. We might still have time to get one more round of raptors from-" Holloway was interrupted by the sound of slamming footsteps as a figure raced through the entrance of CIC. The woman practically threw herself in front of Holloway. It took a moment for the commander to recognize the woman as Kara Thrace. Her face was beat red, and sweat dripped off her head and hair.

"Sir. Adama. Holloway." She struggled to get the words out, barely bothering to breath.

"Thrace?" Holloway asked, looking a bit bewildered. He still held the receiver to his face.

" _Kara's there?"_ Came Adama over the wireless.

"I know we don't have a lot of time," Kara began, wiping the sweat off her brow. "But I need you to hear me out. I have an idea."

* * *

From the CIC of _Pegasus,_ Admiral Cain studied the the freshly updated strategic display along side Colonel Fisk. She hunched over the sizable gray table, her hair draped almost down to the touch screen. Belzen remained front and center by the room's central console, which at this moment displayed an overview of the ship. Resigned to his commander's decision, Belzen had switched gears and spared no effort in ensuring their ship was as primed for a fight as was possible for a battlestar. They'd received a new dispatch from Picon not long ago. Those situation reports were becoming more sporadic, owing to the destruction of much of Canceron's communications network. According to the latest reports, they'd been pushed back from the planet's orbit almost completely. They were in full tactical retreat, focusing now on guarding strategic installations on the outskirt of Canceron's sphere of influence. The admiral was grateful for the initiative her rank allowed her to take.

"The good news is, according to the latest wave of reconnaissance birds, that fleet's still right around where we expected it to be." Fisk explained to the admiral, pointing to a collection of red dots. They were trailed by a set of red dashes indicating the enemy ship's orbit. With each pass around the planet, it stretched further out. "Their course happens to take them to their closest point to the moon at about the same time we come around Hera's far side."

"Which means if we time it right, our course will intersect their orbit and we'll slam right into them." Cain said with a trace of satisfaction. "Can you estimate the amount of time between clearing the far side and detecting them ourselves?"

"If they maintain their current speed and heading..." Fisk began, switching the focus of their strategic display to center on Canceron's large moon, Hera. The extremely thin atmosphere allowed their fleet to hug the pitch black far side of the celestial body, taking full advantage of the physics behind orbital mechanics. Swinging around the moon with their engines at full burn would give a small, but existent nonetheless, speed boost. Theoretically, it would also mask them on their enemy's sensors until they were in line of sight. "Their trajectory takes them right through the L1 point between Canceron and the moon. We have a lot of hardware out there, manned and otherwise. That's probably their target." He paused, mentally crunching the numbers. "I'd say half an hour. We'll be blazing right at each other."

"Without knowing anything about their equivalent of Dradis, we'll have to assume they'll see us the moment we're in line of sight, if they haven't already." Cain reasoned while she straightened herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Belzen dismiss a pair of crewman before walking in her direction. "Which won't be another ten minutes."

"Admiral," Came Belzen's voice. The man handed Cain an electronic pad, which the admiral briefly skimmed it over as her XO continued. "Tubes one through twenty-four are loaded and ready to fire. They just need our authorization codes and they'll be set to fire." Cain gave a slight nod of approval. Belzen seemed in his element. "We have a viper in every launch bay awaiting your word."

"About our vipers..." Cain began, dismissing the overview of their fleet currently displayed on the monitor and replacing it with the familiar image of the massive blue warships firing green beams of light into the void. "I've been thinking about those images we received. Notice how they're not using any flak batteries? Just those beams weapons."

"They could rely on their jamming to screen out anything before it gets too close." Belzen suggested. "They could operate under a completely different tactical doctrine than us."

"I'd hazard a guess that if they're not using flak, it's because they don't _need_ it." Cain stated, looking up from the display to meet her XO's eyes. "We already know they operate at much longer ranges than us. It's not unreasonable to assume their targeting computers are far more sophisticated than ours. The beams they're using on their capital ships might double as anti-fighter weapons as well."

"If that were the case, given the amount of armament being reported on those things..." Belzen started, running his mind down the same path as the admiral. "They'd make mincemeat out of any fighter squadron."

"Precisely." Cain said agreeably. She had nothing but assumptions and logical connections to work with. Their new enemy was still almost a complete unknown. She knew the risks involved in openly engaging a force that, by all indications, had them outmatched in every way. But if they wanted to change that lack of information, they had to take chances. "We need to saturate the air with targets. Every bird we can put up, to maximize their chance of getting through."

"Why don't we just wait until we're closer in before launching our fighters?" Belzen questioned. "To maximize their numbers."

"If their heavy weapons really do double duty as anti-fighter, our vipers will also work to absorb their fire while we close into range." The admiral concluded. "Colonel Fisk, show me our formation on the display again."

With a brief affirmation, Fisk brought up a series of green dots neatly lined up against a large white outline, representing the moon. The admiral zoomed in more, displaying the position of each ship in their battle group in great detail. Their formation was made up of a conglomeration of the BSG's that happened to be berthed at Scorpia at the time of the attack. "I want our battlestars to assume a T-shaped formation. Order the _Cerberus_ and the _Osiris_ to make up the line with _Pegasus_ at the center. The _Anubis_ will keep below our belly." Helena ran through battle ahead in her mind. Ordinarily, they would keep their cruisers in a ring around the battlestars, using them as a screen against incoming fighters and missiles, while the battlestars slugged shells from the back. If they did that here Cain figured they'd need every ship they had up front. "We'll put our cruisers a tight formation up front. All of them. We need to cover our battlestars long enough for them to close the gap."

"That's a risky move." Belzen stated, keeping pace with Cain's mental image of their fleet. "It'll mean a much weaker flak screen on our flank. Not as a big of a deal if we're fighting an enemy that doesn't use missiles, but we don't know how agile they are. They could flank our battlestars and we'd have no cover."

"It's a tradeoff for survivability against their heavy hitters." Cain explained. "If we go at them conventionally, they might be able to knock out our battlestars before we get our nukes off." We make a wall of armor, give them a lot more to deal with at once, we might be able to close the distance with fewer losses." The hope was, they'd be able to tank the hits long enough to get into range. Once they were close enough, she would order their formation to break and surround the enemy ships, then let loose with their nuclear missiles. They had to be close for their alpha strike. If their point defense was as accurate as Cain feared, any launch from further away would be intercepted with ease.

"I'll start herding the sheep now." Fisk replied, tension evident in his voice. They'd be flying into their first engagement in no more than half an hour. Everyone was on edge to some extent.

"Have the other battlestars start putting every viper they have a pilot for in the air. Belzen, order own squadrons begin launching." Cain barked out.

Taking a breath, Belzen reached for his receiver, and began calling out the names of the first wave of squadrons out the launch tubes. Cain observed the green dots on the display begin shifting around, organizing themselves into their newly allocated slots. By Colonial standards, the formation was unconventional. However, their new enemy had already trampled over established doctrine. Cain ran her knife over the palm of her hand. If they didn't adapt soon, many billions would pay the price.


	5. Into the Fray - Part I

A wild update appears. I'm happy to get this out the door. Originally, this and the last chapter were supposed to be one single update. Then it became two. And it almost became three. I'm going to be changing the way Minbari ranks work, as a user directed me towards a very handy list of Minbari ranks. A _Toran_ is a /mid-ranking Minbari crewman _Kor_ is the Minbari equivalent of a high ranking officer, an _Alyt_ is a Minbari captain, and an _Alyt'sa_ is a Minbari admiral or fleet commander.

A few people have asked about the reactions of President Adar, Baltar, and the Cylons to the Minbari's arrival. I've given this area a lot of thought, and they'll all be making appearances in the next chapter.

* * *

"This is insane." Holloway said scornfully from _Triton's_ command console. "Hell, this is _beyond_ insane. This is borderline suicidal _."_ The man rubbed his forehead. His veins looked like they were trying to burst out of his head. "You really think this is going to work?"

"Never bet against Adama." Kara replied in a level voice. "If you have any other ideas that don't end with this ship ripped up one side and down the other, I'd love to hear them."

 _Triton's_ commander let out a nervous chuckle. "Suppose you're right." He conceded. They were minutes away from contact with the enemy. Captain Thrace's plan was a throw of the dice, to put it lightly, but it was all they had.

"We've done all we can from our end." Sager offered. He put a hand on Kara's shoulder. To Holloway's surprise, she didn't jerk away. "You should get in a viper. We'll be needing them."

Kara saluted and turned about, with only a curt "Sir." To dismiss herself. The Colonel turned back to CIC.

"Are those coordinates ready to transmit?" The XO requested.

"Ready as they'll be." Kira replied nervously. "Nav computer wasn't built to calculate a jump for a separateship. We had to adjust for _Galactica's_ position in space manually."

"They'll have to do." Sager acknowledged. He turned to Holloway. "Almost time for the moment of truth. Worst case scenario, at least we'll go down fighting."

Holloway nodded reluctantly as he watched the Dradis display continue to fizzle, growing less reliable by the moment. He drew a long, deep breath. "Helm, full stop. Rotate one-twenty, lets put our belly in their sights." Most of _Triton's_ armor plating had been compromised, the most they could do was put the least damaged section of ship into the line of fire. "Kira, transmit the coordinates."

* * *

Lieutenant Gaeta was only vaguely aware of the world going on around him as he poured over the recently received set of coordinates. His experience working with _Galactica's_ outdated computers was finally paying off. He tweaked the numbers, making minute adjustments as the alien warships closed the distance. Manually working with jump coordinates had been part of his training, but they'd never covered a scenario quite like this. The voice of Colonel Tigh, who was presently looming above him, startled the officer.

"Not going to get us killed, are you?" Saul said. Mostly in jest, Gaeta hoped.

Gaeta made a nervous laugh, and dropped his pencil on the console. "Probably not." He began before he could stop himself. "I mean, I can guarantee we won't jump into the sun. Beyond that it gets iffy." Tigh was looking less than relieved. "Well, there's a reason jumps like this aren't standard practice. Even under the best of conditions, there's a minimum amount of distance you need to fold space. That and the tiny amount of orbital drift you get from the star, even from Canceron, influences where we'll end up using a specific set of coordinates. Considering we're trying to hit an unusually specific point in space, that means modifying the coordinates right up to the second before we jump."

"I'll take your word for it." Tigh said, seeming to allow Gaeta's words to fly out his ears. "Consider yourself lucky, if this doesn't work none of us will be around to kick your ass."

Gaeta felt his muscles tense up. "That's, uh... lucky of me."

" _Triton_ reports full stop." Dualla relayed. "They're reporting two solid contacts, distance seventeen-hundred and closing."

Adama felt the similar mixture of contemplation and worry wash over him as it did forty years ago. Back then, he'd been another hot shot viper pilot. Just a pawn, in the grand scheme of things. Now, he held thousands of lives in his hands. He couldn't take the same fly-by-the-seat risks he could as a fighter jockey. In the back of his head, he wondered if what he was about to do counted as one of those. "Mister Gaeta, are we ready?"

"I wish I had another hour to go over these numbers." Gaeta said to himself, almost under his breath. "Yes sir, coordinates locked in. Ready to initiate hyper-light jump on your command."

"Flight pods fully retracted." Tigh reported. "All hands report ready to jump."

"Then lets get this ship into the fight." Adama said with a heavy voice. "Execute jump."

* * *

The Tinashi class war frigate served a lesser, but still important role in the Minbari navy. The _Ya'Hatar_ and ships like her had a proud heritage stretching back almost as far as the Great War almost a thousand years before. They lacked the immense size and firepower of the Sharlin, but their greater maneuverability and numbers allowed them a certain flexibility that the heavy hitters of the Minbari navy lacked.

 _Ya'Hatar_ and her sister ship had a simple mission: Reconnaissance. The unusually large number of human ships had to be coming and going from somewhere else in the system, and it was their job to figure out where that someplace was while the rest of the fleet finished their work on the orbitals of the human colony. They'd been tracing the human transmissions from hyperspace when they came upon a pair of warships, for whatever reason far from their home. Whatever reason brought the humans there mattered not. The commander of the _Ya'Hatar_ was relatively young, recently given his first command, and hungry for blood. This fortuitous encounter gave him the opportunity to prove himself and his crew in battle. And prove himself he would.

It was understandable, but out of character, for one of the human ships to vanish, leaving its crippled ally to the wolves. Humans were notorious for standing and fighting to the last, even if the battle was without hope. The Minbari commander raised an eyebrow at lack of a hyperspace signature before hand, but it wasn't as if humans had the ability to hide from Minbari sensors. A moment later, his self assuredness was replaced with dread as a flash of light blinded their sensors, and a great hulk of red and gray dominated his holographic view screen.

* * *

" _Contact bearing two-three karam one-one-two, distance three klicks!"_

"Bastards directly on top of us!" Tigh yelled in amazement. The blue center of the Dradis, representing _Galactica,_ had nearly fused with the red dot of the hostile warship.

"We're still closing, she's going to ram!" Gaeta nearly screamed out over the blare of warning klaxons.

"Hard reverse, fire off all starboard lateral thrusters." Adama called out.

"By Gods, that jump actually worked _."_ Tigh said, his voice mixed with relief and tension. He was being visibly pushed into the deck as the ship's inertial dampeners struggled to fight off the rapid change in course.

"Almost worked a little _too_ well." Adama corrected while half the plastic models on the table before them fell over.

"Gunnery control reporting good lock." Dualla said with her hand clasped to her headset.

"All gun batteries weapons free, fire at will." Adama demanded. "And get every bird we have out a launch tube _now."_

" _All gunnery crews, weapons free. All vipers cleared to launch. Repeat, cleared to launch."_ Dualla relayed into her microphone. Adama wondered if she even had another tone of voice.

* * *

Hundreds of gun batteries dotting _Galactica's_ hull roared to life, filling the emptiness with untold tons of lead and steel. The alien warship was less than a ship's length away, giving the gun crews no difficulty hitting their mark. The blue hulk swerved out of _Galactica's_ path, breaking formation with its ally to avoid the otherwise inevitable collision. Adama could only assume they had caught them off guard, as it took a long few seconds for the alien ship to start firing back.

Captain Thrace - or Starbuck, as she would be called for the next hour, went over the pre-flight check from the cockpit of her fighter for the second time. The go-ahead couldn't come quickly enough. "Do you knuckle draggers have those ordinance packages loaded yet?"

" _We only had time to fit three raptors."_ Replied the mechanic over her viper's wireless. _"We're halfway through the fourth, but it might not be ready in time."_

"Three isn't good enough." Kara said sharply. She silently cursed herself. If she had the foresight to start loading nuclear weapons onto their birds the moment she had the authority, they could have an entire squadron fitted by now. "Those three raptors are going to be gunned down in half a second the moment our new friends have eyes on them."

" _You could always get out and start loading the nukes yourself if you're so eager."_ Came the voice of Kara's wingman.

"And risk missing the party? Not a chance, Gemstone." Three would have to do, Kara thought. If everything went according to plan, which was already a lot to expect, they'd be using _Galactica_ to draw the alien's fire while their raptors swooped in and brought the hurt. _Triton_ was too badly damaged to meaningfully contribute to the fight herself.

Thrace observed the dozen odd green dots on her center-left display, representing her squadron. She raised an eyebrow at an unfamiliar name. "Viper seven, _Cosmo,_ I don't recognize your call sign."

" _That makes sense, considering I'm not from your ship."_ Replied a feminine voice Kara couldn't recall ever hearing before. _"If you take a walk around my plane you'll find 'Pacifica' plastered on my wing."_

Kara frowned. She'd been so busy accounting for everything else, she'd almost forgotten they'd taken on a number of _Pacifica's_ viper's before they'd jumped away from Canceron during the initial battle. That was three hours ago, but it felt like an eternity. "Then welcome to Green squadron, Cosmo. Good hunting out there."

" _I made sure I'd be on the first wave of vipers in the air."_ Cosmo said flatly. " _I'm going to make those monsters pay for what they did to Pacifica."_

"We'll gladly give you a hand with that." Kara said smugly.

" _Combat jump successful, all vipers cleared to launch."_ Kira's voice came over her wireless from CIC. " _Repeat, all viper's cleared to join Galactica."_

" _You heard the lady."_ Gemstone said as Kara felt the magnetic launch tube whirr to life. " _Operation 'This will probably get us all killed' is a-go."_

"Shut the frak up, Gemstone." _Triton's_ interior zoomed past Starbuck, replaced by her squadron and others like it. "All raptors, take off and get in formation. Let's go join the party."

* * *

 _Galactica_ 's CIC was a bustle of alarms and ship reports. While most other ships in the fleet had relevant information directly relayed to each crewman's station, the lack of networked systems on board the aging ship meant the most efficient way of sending information was often to simply shout it across the room.

"All gun crews reporting solid hits!" Dualla gladly relayed her commanding officer. The ship rocked with the alien vessel's return fire, digging into _Galactica's_ armor plating.

"Remind me to write a thank you letter to the brass." Tigh said through gritted teeth. "For postponing the removal of our armor until _after_ her last tour."

"Twelve new contacts, all small." Gaeta reported. "Alien ships must have launched fighters."

"Only twelve?" Tigh asked. "We have ten times as many in the air. We should redirect our viper's to intercept, keep our guns focused on the big ship."

Adama nodded in approval. "Order all batteries switch to salvo fire." Adama commanded. From a distance, they spaced out their fire to allow a greater chance of hitting something. From such close range, they could afford to fire off every battery at once to maximize the damage, and hopefully, confusion it would cause to the opposing vessel.

"Hull breaches reported on decks C and D" Tigh said with a phone clasped to his ear. "DC teams are on their way. Good Gods, how much firepower do those weapons have?"

"Rotate thirty degrees starboard." Adama demanded. "We'll keep fresh plating in their line of fire as long as we can."

"Second warship is coming about." Gaeta said with dismay. "They're ignoring _Triton,_ focusing fire on us."

"Keep it that way." Adama said simply. "We can take the hits, she can't."

"That's not going to hold true for long." Tigh said solemnly as he slammed the receiver back into its console. "Fire suppression systems on C just went down, tell our crews they have ninety seconds, and prepare to vent the whole compartment."

* * *

From Kara's perspective, there was hardly an inch of space between _Galactica_ and the blue warship it was hammering. Virtually the entire length of the alien ship's hull was being slammed every second, and the guns looked to be leaving their mark. Visible gashes were starting to form in its hull, allowing _Galactica's_ guns to dig into the vulnerable innards of her enemy. Her plan seemed to be actually working. For the moment, anyway.

"We're going after the second hostile, _Galactica_ has the first under control." Kara barked over the comm. "Raptors stay to the back until you're in firing range, vipers stay to the front. We'll cover them right up until they're ready to fire. I'm taking point." Kara had scarcely finished her sentence when the second ship detected her flight's approach, and those terrifying beams of light began ripping into her squadron.

* * *

Colonel Tigh jumped from station to station, frantically redirecting the crew's efforts to keep the old battlestar fighting while Adama focused on directing the battle itself. _Galactica_ may have been an older ship, but her teeth were still just as deadly.

"Gun crews are reporting significant visual damage on target's hull." Dualla called out with elation.

"The first ship's volume of fire is decreasing." Felix Gaeta said over the chaos of CIC. "Power fluctuations are starting to emanate from target."

"Sounds like our guns are doing their job." The XO said with satisfaction. "Fires are out, but the hull's taking a hell of a beating. Kara better come through with her half of the bargain."

"She'll come through." Adama said. She'd always found a way in the past. He was certain this time would be no different. "Keep our fire focused on the first ship, we don't know how much it takes to kill them."

* * *

Starbuck couldn't help herself from watching the explosions ripple across the alien warship with a half-smirk on her face. Its weapons had almost stopped firing all together, and it was slowly rotating without any sense of direction. Kara wondered if it was moving only on inertia alone. A chain of blasts shattered the war cruiser's aft, blasting two of its three fins off completely and sending the lifeless remnants of its hull drifting into deep space.

" _Scratch one flying squid!"_ Gemstone cried out.

" _The frak do you mean squid?"_ Another pilot asked incredulously.

" _Their ships look like fish. So I'm calling them Squids. Figured we oughta call them something."_ Gemstone explained matter-of-factly.

"They bleed and die just like us." Starbuck said reassuringly to her squadron. "So lets make em' bleed some more."

The remaining ship split its fire between _Galactica_ and _Triton's_ fighter wings, buying them some vitally needed time to get into range. Kara still shuddered to think how many people she'd lose before the raptors could unleash their payload.

"We're closing in on optimal range." Kara noted to her squadron. "All vipers prepare to break on my mark. Stay on your wing leader's ass and be ready to engage any fighters."

Thrace counted the seconds. Enemy fire rocked her squadron, chipping away at the men and women under her command. She began to question if she'd be able to stomach being a CAG throughout the war. She licked her drying lips. "All vipers, _break, break, break."_

* * *

Commander Adama quickly silenced the cheering that began to take place in CIC with the destruction of the first enemy warship. The celebrating could wait until their people weren't getting shot up. "Turn us about, bearing one-seven-four, engines full throttle." It didn't seem to matter if they were a thousand klicks away or ten, those beams carried the same amount of hurt. Given they were just as accurate at a thousand, might as well get as close as they could arrange to give their gunners the best chance to hit.

"Enemy fighter cover has been destroyed." Gaeta proudly announced. "Our viper's have complete control of the skies."

Adama could hear the hull buckling around him with each shot. Damage to the ship was starting to pile up, and the second warship had used the time to open the distance between them. They needed time to get close enough to guarantee their shots. "All batteries switch to barrage fire until we close distance."

" _Galactica, Starbuck. Be advised our birds are opening fire."_ A dozen dots produced themselves on the dradis console, and raced to meet the remaining warship. One vanished, the alien ship recognizing the threat almost instantly. Re-prioritizing its fire, it ceased targeting _Galactica._ A second missile vanished. A third. A fourth. Over half of them had vanished before finally reaching their target and impacting on the alien ship's hull.

* * *

" _Good hits, good hits!"_ A raptor pilot reported as the missiles dug into their target's hull.

Green smoke vented from the side of the injured vessel. Starbuck wondered if that was what they were breathing, or part of the inner workings of their ship. These things were built tough. Such a barrage would have obliterated a Cylon-war era base ship, or crippled a battlestar. But this thing was still kicking. With several rapid shots it vaporized her remaining raptors, though she couldn't tell if it was out of self preservation or vengeance.

"All vipers burn for the target and open fire on the breached sections of hull." Kara hadn't the faintest idea if what she was doing would make a difference, but the alternative was sitting the rest of the fight out. She couldn't allow that. "And for the sake of the Gods, stick to this side of the fight so you don't get shot up by _Galactica."_

From such a close distance, Thrace could barely make out small sections of the ship's blasted interior as she strafed along side it and held down her trigger. To her surprise she was rewarded with flame and smoke as dozens of other viper's repeated the action on the same section of hull. _Galactica_ had closed the distance and was bombarding the ship with an ever increasing number of shells. Suddenly, Kara had the realization that perhaps she'd been a little over eager closing in this far. She opened her mouth to order her squadron to fall back to _Galactica's_ flak cover when the old battlestar herself opened a channel.

" _Massive power surge coming from inside the alien ship."_ Kara didn't need any more warning to make the call to fallback. " _Detecting heavy radiation spike... All fighters clear target airspace immediately!"_

Kara didn't even have time to turn her plane around before a great flash of white appeared _in front_ of the alien ship. A great yellow swirl came to life, forming a giant vortex just in front of the war cruiser. Lightning cracked along its edge as the blue hulk began racing towards whatever freak of physics it'd just conjured. "What the frak _is that."_ Kara let out.

In seconds, the alien warship crossed the threshold into the vortex and vanished from view. Starbuck felt a sense of mounting dread as she felt her viper pulled against its will into the light. She felt like she'd nearly broken her foot slamming into her engines and reversing. " _All vipers, reverse, now, now!"_ She watched helplessly as a pair of her wing men weren't fast enough to pull away in time. They were sucked into the vortex and vanished in an instant. Then, just as quickly as it came, the portal vanished. Her Dradis worked perfectly. Debris from the alien ships littered the space around her.

Dead silence filled her wireless channel. Someone broke it. " _Lords of Kobol, what did we just witness?"_

* * *

This time, not even Adama himself could stop the cries of jubilation washing over his entire ship.

"I think they'll be calling that a _victory,_ Bill." Tigh said as he grabbed his friend's shoulder. He walked to Gaeta and grabbed the officer's hand. "That was some _damn_ fine jump work Mister Gaeta. I'm certain they'll be pinning a medal to your chest for that."

Gaeta merely laughed nervously. Even from Adama's position, the man seemed to be sweating profusely, but he could detect a growing amount of pride in the young man's eyes. The CO smiled. Maybe this new foe wasn't so unbeatable after all. After a few moments of celebration, he took back control of the situation. "Colonel Tigh," He boomed. To his satisfaction, the man instantly turned about. "Get _Triton_ on the horn, we're finishing the evacuation and getting the hell out of here."

"With pleasure." Saul replied with a hand already grabbing the wireless. Over the next few moments, the cheering slowly died out at Adama's command.

"Spare one raptor from the evacuation." The commander said after a moment of contemplation. "Task it to pick up a few samples of that debris we just decorated space with. The eggheads back home are going to want to get their hands on it."

There could be no doubt that the fear and dread that filled the room like a toxic gas had dissipated over the last few minutes. The war was long from over, but at least for the time being, they knew they had a chance of fighting back.

* * *

Kara Thrace was all too happy to take the hand Jacob Holloway offered her. He had the biggest grin on his face she'd ever seen a superior officer carry. He clasped her hand between his. "We all knew it was a gamble, but I'll be damned if you didn't know how to make it work for you."

The pilot didn't bother trying to hide the look of smug satisfaction beaming from her face. "War's a series of gambles, sir. You just have to know which ones to take."

"Maybe we can see about letting you keep that rank when we rendezvous with the fleet, captain." Sager suggested. "I think you've earned it."

Starbuck nodded. "It wasn't me that made the attack possible." She turned to Holloway. "Commander, before we began the evacuation, you asked if _Galactica_ was still combat worthy. I'd like to report the answer to that is 'Hell yes.'" She grinned. "And never doubt that ship again."

* * *

Karl Agathon had no way of keeping an accurate track of time. Taking a shot in the dark, it couldn't have been more than a couple of hours before his hosts decided to pay him another visit. This time, their entrance was markedly different. The sliding door was followed by the blinding lights that had tormented him shutting off. The foot steps sounded closer together, sometimes overlapping. As if there was more than one of those things in the room with him. A set of lights flicked back on, but instead of crippling his vision, they gave the room proper illumination. Helo cautiously opened his eyes. Greeting him were a pair of the decidedly non-human creatures that abducted him. Finally presented with a clear view of his captors, Agathon was shocked to notice how eerily human they looked. The same number of limbs, two eyes, a mouth... The only thing that betrayed them was the curved structure protruding from their heads, and their unnaturally pale skin. Both had a set of brown dots spread along their foreheads, though Helo had no way of telling if they were part of their skin or not.

The alien on the left looked him up and down. His- Its, whatever it was, expression seemed contemplative. Helo wondered if their faces could betray as much emotion as theirs. After a few moments, the same figure began to speak in an unfamiliar tongue. Their language felt hard on the ears, filled with sharp syllables and awkward sounds he would have had difficulty trying to replicate. After the figure finished, the one to it's right picked up in Caprican.

"He wants to know where your people come from." The figure to the right demanded. His voice was familiar, probably the same person that questioned him the last time. It struck Helo that this alien must be translating for the one on the left. "If you truly have no connection with Earth, how did you come to live here?"

Helo hadn't realized how dehydrated he was until he opened his mouth to try and speak. His first attempt to speak was rewarded with a cough. He blinked hard, licked his lips with what little moisture his mouth had, and tried again. "Life here began out there." The officer quoted the first words of the ancient scriptures. "We settled here two thousand years ago, after a great exodus forced us to leave our original home."

"Two thousand years?" Tarreck repeated incredulously to Helo. He spoke the strange language to the figure on his left. The other alien maintained a look of disbelief as he said something to the interrogator.

"What do you call the nearby planet?" The interrogator translated again. "How many humans are living on it?"

Helo weighed the decision to be truthful or not. It wasn't tactically sensitive information. And being cooperative to a degree could have its benefits. Perhaps even prove to the aliens they had no connection to Earth. "The planet our ship was headed for, we call Canceron. Over six billion souls live on it."

The eyes of the interrogator widened in shock at the number Helo provided. After yet another translation, Helo decided to try a question of his own. "Who _are_ you? Why did you attack us unprovoked? The alien tilted his head. He looked, as far as Helo could tell, genuinely confused. He translated again. The two indulged in a fairly lengthy conversation.

"Your people started this war." He explained to Helo's dismay. "You massacred one of our great leaders in an unprovoked attack."

"But that wasn't _us."_ Helo rebuked, half pleading. "I mean, for fraks sake, you've got a better picture than I do. I'm assuming you're intercepting our communications. Do we sound like we have any idea what we're fighting right now?"

A long pause sent a pang of hope through the officer. His eyes remained locked on the interrogator. "Please, for the sake of the gods, there's thirty billion people on these worlds who haven't the slightest idea who you are, if you just-" A klaxon erupted throughout the room. The two spoke briefly, and turned the depart. The interrogator turned back to Helo one final time.

"Minbari. We call ourselves the Minbari Federation."

* * *

It took over thirty years of rigorous effort for Alyt'sa Abidor to acquire the status he held within his clan. The rank hadn't come easy to him. In the Wind Swords, things never did. The elders were so firmly entrenched in their positions, little short a previous commander dying of age allowed a rise in status, and it certainly never came without their implicit trust. Building that trust took decades, and for most members of the clan, it never came. The aging man stood within a great spherical chamber, with holographic projectors etched into every surface. It was similar to the displays every Minbari ship carried on its bridge, but on a significantly larger scale. The ship's skipper would come here when the time for battle came, allowing them to keep their finger on the pulse of the battlefield like no human commander could hope to match.

Abidor had spent the last few hours observing his fleet making its way around the planet below time and again. Piece by piece, the infrastructure the humans relied on to coordinate their resistance was being destroyed. By the time he rested, their orbital presence should have been destroyed, and the civilian population on the planet left to their devices until the same slaughter had taken place above every human colony. He'd fought the same battle over a dozen human worlds, but this time, things didn't seem to be occurring so routinely.

Alyt'sa Abidor didn't speak the human language, nor did he have any desire to learn it. However, he didn't need to know the language to acknowledge the sheer volume of traffic bombarding his ship's communication's array. Normally, their translators listened in on any Earth ship in the system to record fleet strength and movements. This time, the transmissions came like a great torrent bursting through a dam. To make matters worse, none of them were using frequencies they were familiar with, so they were still trying to sort military communiques from civilian and otherwise. They'd managed to deduce there were other human colonies in the system from snippets their translators had isolated. Their scribes would have a lot of questions to mule over after the resistance had been quashed.

A soft chirp brought a pause to the fleet commander's reverie. The view transitioned to a new section of space. Great flashes of light came to life in the blackess, and grew into the blue vortex Abidor was all too familiar with. Could the humans be attempting a last-ditch defense? To his surprise, it was a Sharlin war cruiser that emerged from the jump point. A female voice came over the room. _"Alyt'sa, the_ _Sha'Kan just exited hyperspace within communications range of our fleet. Alyt Lorann is hailing us."_

"Back so soon?" Abidor asked rhetorically. "Order them to take up formation with us, and patch Lorann through to my chamber."

Without a word of acknowledgment, the crewman relayed Abidor's orders. The commander demanded a high level of efficiency out of his crew. They were the flagship of the Wind Swords, and the very embodiment of Minbari ideals. A role model for the rest of the fleet. The void of space morphed into a view of the bridge of their new arrival. A slightly translucent Lorann and his crew materialized in front of him. On the _Sha'Kan's_ bridge, a similar image of Abidor would be projected to their crew. Lorann gave a ritualistic bow, greeting his superior.

"I take it you have something to report?" Abidor asked, jumping to the point.

Lorann had proven himself time and again as one of Abidor's most loyal commanders. Even so, pleasantries were for the less disciplined clans."Our mission went without obstacle, and we captured a pair of humans on their approach to the planet. We've been attempting to interrogate them since then."

Abidor raised his eyebrow. "What do you mean _attempting?"_

"To be blunt..." Lorann began, taking breath. "Something is terribly amiss. Everything about him, from the ships we encountered to the clothes they're wearing are unfamiliar. You've seen the planet below, it's absolutely _teeming_ with the humans. It has no right to exist!"

The Alyt'sa nodded just perceptibly. Lorann was confirming what he had begun to suspect. "You're correct, commander. Something about this system isn't adding up." Lorann opened his mouth to speak, but was swiftly cut off by the fleet commander. "But that doesn't change our mission."

Lorann looked visibly flustered. "Alyt'sa, there are as many humans on the planet below as Earth itself, and if the transmissions we're intercepting are to be believed, another _dozen_ worlds out there of similar size-"

"Dozen?" Abidor asked in disbelief, cutting Lorann off again. "In how many systems? How did you find this information? Have the humans been more cooperative than you're letting on?"

"We captured them after luring their patrol into a predetermined area. During their pursuit, we isolated the specific frequency their military ships were communicating on, and our only translator has been focused on deciphering those channels." Lorann explained. Abidor gave a nod of approval. "They refer to themselves as the Twelve Colonies. Not the Earth Alliance."

"And what else have you gleaned from these channels?" Abidor asked, railroading the conversation to what he deemed as tactically relevant.

"There's a lot to sift through, but everything we've translated so far suggests confusion more than anything else." Lorann said. "Interestingly enough, we haven't found a single reference to the word 'Minbari' at all." Abidor's expression returned to its default emotionless state. "It's almost as if they haven't the slightest idea who we are, and everything we've learned from the captives corroborates that. "

"Yet we observed one of the greatest human warriors making his way towards this system mere days ago." Abidor countered. "Are you sure you're not letting the captives get to you, Lorann? I expected better from one of my finest."

The toran beside Lorann bowed as he spoke up himself. "Alyt'sa, if I may?" Abidor nodded, allowing the Minbari to speak. "I am the interrogator and translator of the _Sha'Kan._ I've personally ringed information out of over a dozen humans. I persuaded one of their commanders to betray the defenses of their colony on Sigma III before our attack, and turned what passes as hardened men among the humans into gibbering messes who will give away anything to make their torment end." He grinned as he finished his boast. "I'm very good at what I do."

"And I take it you've spoken with these humans?" Abidor questioned, somewhat annoyed at the toran's bragging. Still, he had to admire the crewman's pride in his work.

"I have." The interrogator began. "And I'm convinced their ignorance is the truth. They don't know who we are, why we're here, and what's more, they didn't know there was intelligent life beyond their solar system _at all."_

"Alyt'sa," Lorann took over the conversation. "At the very least, the humans in this system are an unknown. We don't know the size or composition of their fleet, and their hyperdrives seem to possess some very unusual properties. We should pull back to the outer reaches of the system. We'll have all the time in the world to observe their communications, figure out what we're dealing with, and return in-"

" _Pull back?"_ Abidor boomed. Lorann and the man beside him shook. "No Wind Sword ship has pulled back in over a thousand years. Not since the age of Valen has there ever been an enemy fierce enough to make our clan consider withdrawal. I won't be the commander to break that record, especially not against an enemy as pathetic and dishonorable as the humans."

"Shai, forgive me if I gave the impression I was suggesting a retreat." Lorann pleaded. "Isn't it only tactically sound to hold off running into battle until we know the strength of our enemy?"

"Our enemy, Earth born or not, crumbled under the might of our fleet in minutes during the initial battle. And now you're suggesting we pull back? Give them time to regroup? Absolutely not." He folded his arms into his sleeves, daring his subordinate to argue.

Lorann bowed again. "I understand, Alyt'sa. Request that our ship be permitted to stay within your fleet. We can participate in-" An alarm blared across both ships. An image appeared before Abidor, alerting him of something new appearing on his ship's sensors. The same female voice boomed across the room. " _Alyt'sa, a number of contacts just appeared off our bow, coming in fast. They're vector_ _suggests they're intending to attack."_

Abidor grinned. "You wanted a closer look at the humans, Lorann. Looks like you're about to get your wish." With a wave of his hand, Lorann vanished. "Turn our fleet thirty degrees port, and launch the nial fighters. If these... Colonies, are deluded enough to challenge us, we'll be happy to oblige them."


	6. Into the Fray - Part II

Captain Zak Hemsley let out an expletive over the wireless as the latest burst of light came uncomfortably close to his viper. That last shot vaporized one of his squadron mates. He certainly had no shortage of wingmen, though that would be changing shortly if they kept losing them at this rate. Hundreds of the gray specks of vipers blanketed the space around him, dwarfed by massive metal hulks. To his front, dozens of green beams erupted across the blackness, incinerating their vipers with impunity. It was like they were being asked to fly into their death. Another blast rocked his viper, ending the life of the pilot on his wing.

" _We're getting torn apart out here!"_ Cried a voice over his wireless. Hemsley recognized it as one of the pilots from his own squadron.

"Maintain formation." The captain said as calmly into his headset as he could muster. "Otherwise, if our friends out there don't kill you, Cain will."

Far off to his left, a battered silver ship took another blast to its hull. The Berserk class cruiser was half the width and almost the full length of a battlestar. A sleek set of ribs jutted out the ship's middle, on which laid dozens of gun platforms. It lacked only the flight pods and long-duration equipment to distinguish it from a full on capital ship. They were the heavy cruisers and escorts of the Battlestar Group, making up the defensive screen of heavier ships. The crippled ship had to have taken at least a dozen hits and counting. Berserks didn't have quite as heavy armor as a battlestar, and it was starting to show. A sizable chunk of the ship's port side had been completely ripped off, flames and gases spewing from the open wound. Smoke bellowed across the war ship's topside, where a blast had ripped through the ship's bow and exited a hundred meters later on the upper side of the cruiser.

Hemsley's eyes were locked on the Berserk, incapable of forcing himself to turn away from the carnage. Another blast sent fragments blasting away from the ship's starboard engine. The cruiser began listing badly. The crew should have been compensating for the decreased engine power, unless they had lost the capability to do so. Another shot later, the ship didn't _have_ a starboard engine anymore. An explosion, this time coming from deep within the ship across the ship's center-line. Hemsley sent a prayer for the souls on board. Then another for the rest of them still in the air.

* * *

Admiral Cain watched the Dradis display with a cool, calculating gaze. The monitor had begun to fizzle with static some minutes ago. As expected, they'd lost the ability to make out much outside of their immediate area. Once their battlegroup approached the alien fleet, their enemy had adjusted their heading in an attempt to keep the distance open. The nature of their foe's orbit was making it difficult for them to simply reverse. Instead, they had opted for a hard turn away from the planet. Cain reasoned that, in a similar situation, she'd have tried the same maneuver. The fact their enemy didn't simply keep charging into them pleased the admiral. It meant they were trying to avoid a close range confrontation. Which meant, at least to some extent, their weapons had to be effective.

A hard blast rocked across _Pegasus,_ forcing one unfortunate officer onto the floor. The admiral kept a firm hold on her command console, barely shifting her eyes through the ordeal. The large green dot closest to _Pegasus_ vanished from the display.

"We've lost the _Agata,_ sir." Came the solemn voice of _Pegasus's_ Dradis operator. Ensign Mabel had served with _Pegasus_ for six months now. All things considered, she seemed to be holding up to the pressure fairly well.

"I can't get the computers to burn through the interference." Gina said. She hunched over the Dradis console alongside Mabel. While Cain was certain the ensign knew what she doing, she was happy to accept the network specialist's offer of help. Mabel didn't seem to object. "I've never seen this kind of tech. Not from anywhere..." She finished in awe.

"What's the status of our other battlestars?" Cain demanded. Their battlestar's were the centerpiece of their fleet, and held the nuclear missiles that represented their greatest chance of ending the battle in their favor. They had to survive, no matter the cost.

"All our ships have taken hits," Reported Fisk, dutifully keeping track of the status of their battlegroup. "But the other battlestar's are reporting only minor damage for now. They're all in fighting shape."

"They're spreading out their firepower." Cain thought out loud. "Why aren't they coordinating their attack on individual ships? From this range they have all the time in the world to focus fire us down."

"We're losing planes left and right out there." Belzen stated, going over an electronic data link giving moment by moment updates of each individual fighter. "We'll be lucky if half of them make it to the actual fight."

"Every hit the viper's take is one that we don't." Cain replied grimly. "Colonel Fisk, order the fleet to standby to fire all forward batteries on my mark. She traced her hand over a section of space where the distortions made it all but impossible to get a read out. "We'll focus our fire here."

"Aye sir." Fisk said as he highlighted the same section of space on his display, and transmitted the coordinates across the fleet. The datalinks shared between the fleet made coordinating their firepower a simple matter. "Targeting data is in place, all ship's reporting ready to fire on command."

The admiral allowed a few moments to pass. Another blast rocked the ship, this time from enemy fire. She bit her lip, and debated sending off a prayer before giving the order. After a moment's consideration, she tossed the thought aside. She drew a breath. "Mark."

* * *

Alyt Lorann curiously observed the human fleet inch their way across the star field. Their ships were just about in range for a detailed scan, and he intended to take full advantage of the opportunity. Their neutron cannons hammered away mercilessly at the dozen or so human ships, but something was amiss. With a wave of his arm, a holographic projection of one their larger starships appeared before him. The first thing to grab Lorann's attention was the craft's sheer size. It was gargantuan, easily out massing anything he'd ever seen in a human fleet. A set of four runways stretched across its arms, leading Lorann to suspect it was some type of heavy carrier. Dedicated carriers typically didn't carry much in the way of firepower of their own, so why would the humans send them into the front lines like this?

"That ship has to be as long as we are." Lorann noted. "There's no rotating sections... I thought human's didn't have artificial gravity?"

"Their ships are significantly more armored than any human craft I've encountered." noted Khala from the bridge's tactical station. Normally, the human cruisers were crippled after the first pair of shots. Even dreadnoughts folded after a few seconds of sustained fire. These ships were taking a great deal more to put down.

* * *

"Something very peculiar indeed." Came the voice of Tarreck, repeating his commander's earlier words. The interrogator made a ritual of joining the command staff on the bridge during battle. Given their victories owed at least some small credit to his efforts, he enjoyed watching the fruits of his work come to life.

"Fleet - focus fire on the following targets." boomed Abidor's voice across the warship's bridge.

"Abidor seems to have taken note as well." Lorann noted. "Concentrate our fire alongside the fleet. We'll bring them down one by one."

As Lorann finished barking out the order, a hundred flashes blasted outwards from the human fleet, then another hundred. Yellow and orange bolts screamed through space towards the Minbari fleet. For the first time in his life, Lorann felt a tinge of uncertainty in the outcome of a battle.

* * *

Hemsley couldn't help feeling awestruck as a thousand bursts of light filled the void. All around him, the battlestars filled space with untold tons of metal every second. Off in the distance, the looming outlines of the alien warships were beginning to grow. They were approaching almost directly towards their sides. All he could see for now was a set of blue lines a few inches long, which he assumed were the battleships shown in the briefing room not long before they were shoved out of a launch tube.

" _Pegasus_ to Red squadron, confirm firing solution?" Came a static filled female voice over the wireless. If _Pegasus's_ targeting computer was in the same shape as his viper's, they might as well be ranging their shots with an abacus.

" _Pegasus_ , this is Switchblade." Hemsley began. "Still no joy on firing solution, shots are falling short of targets. Give it more... lead..." The CAG's voice drifted off as the green beams cutting into the dark intensified below him "Pegasus stand by." Gently, the pilot tugged on his joystick, changing his attitude just enough to give a clear view of the action. Instead of blasting every ship indiscriminately, now the alien warships were concentrating almost exclusively on the battlestar _Anubis_. Fire ripped across her hull, every shot taking out a chunk of her armor.

" _Pegasus_ to Switchblade, please repeat?" Came the voice over the wireless.

A sizable chunk of _Anibus's_ flight pod was blasted away from the ship. The battlestar kept powering on, defiantly refusing to break formation. Hemsley reached for his push to talk button while another set of blasts brought the battlestar that much closer to the brink.

* * *

Jurgen Belzen slammed his receiver in haste. "Gunnery control reports the same as our viper's. Our batteries still aren't connecting."

"Modify our course, three degrees starboard, have forward batteries widen their firing arc." Cain barked in frustration. Widening their area of fire would mean less saturation of the target area, which meant even fewer shots would connect even if they caught some of the alien ships in the square. Dradis had lost more and more functionality as they approached the alien ships, to the point where it was almost quicker to have ships transmit their position over tight-beam wireless than it was to infer it from their sensors.

"Admiral," Fisk called out. "hostile ships have changed their firing pattern." They're focusing their weapons on the _Anubis._ She's taking major damage."

The sudden shift in tactics perplexed Cain. Why hadn't they fought like this from the start? "Order the _Anubis_ to fall back behind us, we'll cover her until we close the distance."

"I think I'm starting to get a clearer picture." Reported a flustered Mabel. "A half dozen badly garbled returns, shifting in and out. It's hard to keep track of them." The operator sounded terribly unsure of herself, probably not helped by the stress of combat or the uselessness of her equipment. Still, she soldiered through. "Strongest return is bearing... two-three-one, karam one-three... correction, one- _five_ _-_ seven _._ Distance approximately seven hundred kilometers." In a hushed voice, she added, "Very approximate."

"It's better than nothing." Said Belzen with feigned optimism.

Their fleet's one ace in the hole was their nuclear alpha strike. For all the admiral knew, the alien fleet had already detected the radiological signatures of their active nukes and was making preparations to counter it. They still had to try. It was the only card they had. "We need to hold our nukes as long as possible. Get right up beside them, then give them a full broadside." She said adamantly. "Anything less and they'll be intercepted."

"That's if we can get close en-" Belzen was silenced by a hard crash rocking across _Pegasus._ Something felt different about that one, though Cain couldn't put her finger on it.

"That was a fragment from _Anubis's_ hull ramming our belly." Mabel reported with a slight tremble in her voice.

"Order main batteries to begin firing the moment they're in effective range." Cain ordered, ignoring the Dradis technician. "I want them to tighten their fire on the coordinates you have. We'll try to get lucky with them and zero in our firing solution from there."

Admiral Cain clutched her knife in the palm of her hand. She closed her eyes, gathering herself while the voice of her XO barked out commands to the ship's gunners. How much longer could she afford to keep them in this slaughter? What if she was really leading her men to their deaths? She forced herself to push those thoughts away, but they still stayed tucked away in a box deep within her. She threw the knife back in her pocket and forced open her eyes.

* * *

Human sensors were so worthless against Minbari stealth systems, that one in every thousand shots were lucky to hit from a distance. Lorann had never considered what to do if _ten_ thousand shots were racing in his direction every second. While the overwhelming majority of shots went wildly off course, a handful managed to hit their mark. And that number was getting bigger by the second.

"The damage is negligible." Khala proudly reported. "As with before, their weapons are made up of kinetics."

"Negligible for now." Lorann corrected her. The worst thing a commander could do was misjudge their enemy. The last time a Minbari commander did that, he lost them their flagship. While the damage was light for now, the human ships seemed to be absolutely brimming with weapons. There were nearly as many shells in the void as there were stars in their vision! He didn't care for allowing the human ships to get close enough for their firepower to multiply.

"Those markings." said Tarreck, raising his arm to point towards the human ships. "Their identical to the ones on the captive's uniforms."

Lorann shook his head. "I can't pretend to understand what's going on." He said with a growing mixture of confusion and concern.

"Alyt..." Khala said slowly. Her tone from before had changed sharply. Two moments ago, she had been happy to shrug off the human fleet. Now, something in her voice told Lorann something was deeply wrong. "They have to be using some type of jamming. They can't possibly have as many strike craft as our sensors are telling us they have."

"What do you mean?" Lorann asked expectantly.

"Four _hundred_ , thirty eight strike craft." Khala said with bewilderment. " _Hundred,_ Alyt. And that's after we've been vaporizing them by the dozen."

" _How many?"_ Lorann asked in shock. Sharlin cruisers, the largest ship in the Minbari fleet, carried a complement of fifteen Nial class fighters. Their fleet, small by Minbari standards, carried a little over fifty fighters between them. Lorann stared at the massive human carriers quickly closing the gap. The sound of fire began to echo through his ship as the human weapons began hitting their mark with greater frequency.

It seemed like with every passing moment, some new revelation drove the point home in the Alyt's mind. These human's weren't the Earth Alliance. They were something else. An unknown. Despite their early victories, the thought that they weren't as in control as he assumed sent shiver's down the commander's spine.

* * *

"Distance three hundred." Came Mabel's voice once more. "Getting a much stronger return now. Confirm six large bandits. Three larger capital ships, another three mediums. Still can't get a count on their fighters."

In the last few minutes alone, they'd lost another three cruisers. The _Anubis_ was only just barely clinging to life, and the _Osiris_ wasn't too far behind. Their guns were finally starting to connect, though what effect it was having on the enemy ships, if any at all, was impossible to say.

"Forward batteries cease fire." Cain commanded sharply. She turned to Belzen. "This part's going to be tricky."

At last, she had something resembling a clear picture of the alien fleet on CIC's tactical display. They were barreling straight into the heart of the enemy fleet. Their makeup was surprisingly recognizable. The three heavier ships were flanked by their mediums in an echelon formation. Cain suspected the medium sized ships had a similar role to their cruisers. She needed to know the upper limits of their new enemy's abilities, which made one of the heavier battleships a priority. If they went after the center most warship, they could potentially break their enemy's formation... but would be exposing themselves to the most of their fire. Instead, she opted for the closest capital ship to their battlegroup. "Fisk, I want you to order the _Anubis_ and _Cerberus_ to make a twenty degree turn starboard when I give the command. Then, have the _Osiris_ tighten their formation with us and prepare for a similar turn to port."

"That'll put the _Anubis_ outside of our cover." Fisk pointed out. "She's barely steaming along as is, if we put her into the fray..."

"I'm aware, Colonel." Cain said regrettably. "Have both battlestar's prepare for the course change, and to begin preparing for nuclear launch. Belzen, we'll be making a twenty degree turn port with _Osiris_ at the same time."

"You're going to flank them." Cain's XO said accusingly. "Put us on either side and let loose. But you're putting the _Anubis_ right into the enemy's formation..."

"The _Anubis_ is too badly damaged to survive the engagement regardless." Cain said, that tinge of regret still in her throat. "We need to make sure she gets her nukes off while she still has the chance." The admiral shook her head. "Don't think I haven't thought the implications through, Colonel."

Belzen nodded in reluctant acceptance. "Aye, admiral. Awaiting turn to port."

"All ships reporting ready to execute orders." Fisk reported. Another blast rocked across CIC. Another dot vanished from Fisk's terminal.

The admiral punched a code into CIC's central terminal. After a beep confirmed her keypress, the display prompted her to press a thumb against the display. She complied. Once the machine confirmed her identity, a pair of panels sided open on opposite sides of the terminal. "Colonel Belzen, get your launch key ready." The use of nuclear weapons necessitated a more drawn out procedure that required the consent of both the CO and XO of the ship, or whoever had taken their places should one or both individuals be incapacitated. Cain took her place on one end of the console as Belzen met her eyes on the other, with a small silver key resting between in his fingers.

"Execute turn." The admiral barked out. The Dradis monitor shifted as _Pegasus_ and _Osiris_ broke off in one direction formation with the battlegroup. Anubis'scourse changed alongside them. Cain counted the seconds as their ship lined up with the large red circle closest to their battlestar.

"Helena," Belzen began nervously. "I've known you a long time, but I don't think I've ever actually asked. Do you believe in the Gods?"

Cain almost swept the irrelevant question aside, then grudgingly decided to give her friend an answer. "Whether they exist or not, does it matter? Win or lose, we're in this war on our own. The Gods aren't coming to save us."

"Distance one hundred." Reported Mabel dutifully.

"All ventral tubes, standby to fire." Cain yelled out.

"Tubes one through twelve report good lock." Belzen reported, eyeing the diagram of _Pegasus_ still displaying on the command console. A number of warning lights indicated the ship was beginning to take its own share of the punishment.

"Now." The admiral said with finality as she slid her key into it's holster. A small light on the panel turned from red to green as Belzen repeated the act on his end.

Seconds later, the panel chirped as the two command officers confirmed their course of action. Fisk reported the same ritual had been carried out aboard the _Anubis._ A dozen missiles streaked from the Mercury class battlestar. In a few moments, they would know one way or the other if sacrificing so many lives had been in vain.

* * *

"Switchblade to Red squadron, move to engage, weapons free." Hemsley barked over the wireless. Flak began to light the space around the captain as his squadron charged into the enemy fighters. The alien warships had grown into gigantic blue hulks against his cockpit glass. Dozens of smaller fighters were gathered around their mother ships, and it was his job to ensure they were dealt with. All eight fighters that made up the remnants of his twenty-four ship flight banked left with him, diving on the tails of a pair of alien fighters. Despite their causalities, they still seemed to have their adversaries outnumbered.

"Whiplash, Thumper, on my wing. Everyone else, play top cover and watch our six." He poured on mark seven viper's throttle, quickly closing the distance. The pair of alien craft were focused on another squadron. They ducked and weaved through space with little care for inertia.

" _What the frak?! These things have no engines!"_ Cried out a voice over the wireless Hemsley didn't recognize. To his bewilderment, the voice was correct. There wasn't any visible propulsion system on the alien crafts.

"We'll let the techies worry about it, keep your eyes on the ball." Replied the captain dismissively. He was forced to line his shot up manually. He could barely make out his own wingmen on Dradis. Fortunately, the fleet's big ships seemed to be having better luck. Their gun batteries were connecting with the alien ships more often than not. Finally, they were starting to fight on even footing.

A blinding light forced Hemsley's hand above his visor. For a moment, he feared yet another friendly ship had gone up in flames. As he looked at the source of the explosion, his eyes widened not in horror, but in elation. He met the menacing blue ship just in time to catch the next batch of missiles fly straight for it. A handful were intercepted by the same green beams the captain had learned to fear, but most hit their mark. Another dozen blasts of light ripped across the ship's massive hull, engulfing most of it in flames. One of it's lower fins blasted off and was flung off into deep space. Debris flooded out all over the ship as it began spinning out of formation. Zak noticed it had stopped firing. Cheers erupted over the wireless, so loud he was forced to lower his headset's volume. It quickly subsided, replaced by the same combat chatter, but moral had shot through the roof. For the first time since the war began, victory didn't seem like such an impossibility.

" _All communications with lower decks has been lost. The reactor is cascading out of control. We're not going to be able to stop it."_ The Minbari commander coughed, smoke filling the room around him. The holographic projection appearing in Abidor's chamber was badly degraded, more of it filling with static by the second. _"It's been an honor serving with you, Alyt'sa. Finish this holy war in our name, and in Duhkat's name. We proudly give our lives for Minbar."_

With that, the transmission cut out. Abidor watched helplessly as the _Hala'Faye_ eked power from its gravimetric drives one final time, pushing itself out of formation and putting as much distance between itself and the rest of the Minbari fleet as possible with the last few seconds of life it had left. The humans still pounded at it mercilessly, but why? What point was there in continuing to torture an enemy that was clearly defeated? Finally, the ship vanished in a final, brilliant explosion.

Abidor gripped the console before him hard enough to make his fingers go numb. The comm went silent for a sparse few seconds as the _Hala'Faye_ exploded. Then, it came to life again. Every ship in his fleet was requesting orders. With his hands still gripping the console, he resumed his duty. "Widen our formation, give our cannons more time to intercept their missiles. We'll kill every human in that fleet down to the last man and woman. Show no Mercy!"

* * *

Cheering had quickly been replaced by dread on the CIC of _Pegasus._ Despite scoring what was, as far as they knew, the first real kill of the war, there were five more warships very eager to have their revenge. The _Anubis_ had been cut to shreds not even a minute after getting off her alpha strike, and _Pegasus_ herself looked as if it were next on the menu. Sparks erupted from one of the CIC's central consoles, and the ship lurched with increasing force every few moments. Cain monitored the

"Turn us about, prep all dorsal tubes for fire." Cain ordered through the smoke rapidly filling the room. "Order all fleet batteries to focus on this ship." Cain pointed to one of the smaller cruiser's on Fisk's display. "Anything less than our main guns doesn't seem to be scratching the bigger ships. Maybe they'll have more luck with their escorts."

"DC teams alpha and beta, seal off sections 31 through 36 and prepare to vent." Belzen fought against the ship itself, struggling to keep as much of the warship intact as he could manage. Their networked computers were preforming impeccably, juggling the ship's power grid to prevent overload and assigning damage control teams to problem areas before they spiraled out of control. For all his training, a great deal of the work boiled down to delegating the tasks the computer deemed most pressing. "She's not going to take this punishment forever." Jurgen snapped at Cain.

" _Massive_ power readings emanating from the _Osiris."_ Mabel reported, her voice shaking slightly.

"Half her fraking fuel lines just ignited!" Fisk said in shock. He threw his voice at Cain. "Reactor fire, they couldn't get it under control before it got to the engines. _Osiris_ just lost most of her power and navigation control, she might as well be a walking corpse."

"This fleet is getting ripped to shreds." Belzen leveled his voice at his commander. "For Gods sake sir, _please,_ get us the hell out of here while our FTL drives still work."

Cain stared at her XO, this time in silence. She turned to the Dradis console. Back to her XO. She felt as if two sides of her were fighting for dominance. Again an explosion rocked the ship, then a loud bang made Helena's ears ring. A flash of light illuminated the room, and a blood curling scream vibrated through the room.

Helena turned to see Ensign Mabel on the floor, screaming as flame engulfed most of her face. Her hands grabbed at her face in a vain, desperate attempt to put the flame out, but it served only to spread the fire across her body faster. And that tormented scream of sheer agony... it wouldn't stop. Belzen was on top of her in seconds, fire extinguisher in hand. He sprayed across her body, starving the flames and coating her body in white. " _We need a medical team in CIC, ASAP."_ Belzen grabbed a medical kit out of a compartment and frantically began sorting through it. Soot covered his hands. " _For Gods sake Helena, get us out of here!"_

Cain couldn't turn her face from the burnt remnants of her officer. Her brain barely registered Fisk asking for her orders. They'd hurt the aliens, but it wasn't enough. They still couldn't win this. But she still had a crew she could save. "Colonel Fisk, order all vipers to begin landing and all ships to spool up their jump drives. All dorsal tubes target the closest warship and fire every nuke we still have loaded."

Fisk looked more than eager to relay his new set of orders. "The level of interference could make calculating a jump-"

"I don't fraking _care_ where we jump, just spool up the drives!"

* * *

The glass around Hemsley's viper burned orange as his Viper bolted through the remnants of his first combat kill. He gave a steady sigh of relief before throwing his neck around to get a visual on his wingmen. "Target down." He reported through clenched teeth.

" _Good kill, Captain."_ Replied the bird closest to his. _"One on your nine o'clock, distance roughly two klicks."_

Hemsley struggled to make out the pale blue dot of the enemy fighter far off into space. The alien's fighter craft had been disintegrated by their flak cover and fighter screen. Their remaining strike craft were scattered and on the defensive, mostly sticking to their own capital ships."I see him Thumper. He's too far out too intercept. We're staying with _Pegasus."_

Despite their victories, Their big ships seemed to be fighting a losing battle. A massive chunk of _Osiris_ had just blasted apart, and more than half of their Berserks were in a million pieces around the sun. Another alien ship, a smaller cruiser, looked as if it were on its last legs, but that still left four fully capable war ships, and Hemsley had the growing worry they didn't have the numbers to win this.

" _All vipers return to base, combat landings authorized."_ That voice on the wireless might as well have been the goddess of life. _"Return to your ships and prepare for combat jump."_

"Alright, lets wrap this up." Hemsley called out with no hesitation. "Break off and get to the hanger, you do _not_ want your flight leaving without you today." As the captain swung his bird around for his final approach, he caught a final stream of missiles jetting away from his mother ship. _Just another minute. H_ e thought to himself. _One more minute and you'll be out of this Hell._

* * *

Another round of missiles rippled from the human warship, this time headed directly for the _Sha'Kan._ Lorann grabbed the closest thing within reach, and braced himself for the impact. The human ship was further away this time, and their defense system had more time to intercept the warheads before they detonated. But there were too many to stop all of them. Despite his best efforts, Alyt Lorann was thrown against the floor of his ship head first as the nuclear explosions slammed into the Sharlin.

"Moderate damage, hull breaches being reported on decks 23 through 32." Khala noted, assessing the damage. "Fire suppression is already venting out the most damaged compartments."

Lorann struggled to his feet, and found his hand covered in red. It took a few moments to recognize the fluid dripping down his eye. He touched his forehead, only for a sharp sting to immediately make him regret it. "Then we can still fight." He said proudly, putting pressure on his wound. He had no intention of pausing to treat himself.

"And fight we shall." Tarreck said beside him, appearing noticeably nonchalant about his commander's predicament.

"Continue focusing fire on their flagship. We'll return the favor a hundred... fold...?" His voice drifted off as, one by one, the remaining human ships morphed into great flashes of white light. They vanished from view, and their sensors. The battle came to an abrupt, anticlimactic end. "Khala," Lorann began, "What just happened?"

"They vanished." Khala explained in awe.

"Very astute, kor. _How_ did they vanish? There was no hyperspace signature!"

"Haven't our ships been reporting a strange form of hyperdrive on the human vessels?" Tarreck offered. "I think we just had a first hand view of it."

Lorann nodded in agreement. "Something _very_ peculiar is going on indeed."

" _Alyt'sa to fleet."_ Boomed Abidor's voice over the _Sha'Kan's_ war room. _"I'm ordering a tactical withdrawal of all ships in system. Proceed into hyperspace and emerge at the following coordinates."_

Lorann couldn't help but let out a small laugh. He shook his head, his hand still clasped to the gash on his forehead. Tarreck gave him an incredulous look. "There goes his thousand-year record." Lorann said lightheartedly. "And it only cost, what, a thousand or so Minbari?"

* * *

Helena had never imagined herself as a hero. She would do what it took to stop the Cylons from condemning children to endure the same life of pain and misery as she did when they took everything from her. She always told herself she would do whatever it took, pay whatever price. As she observed the crippled body of her officer laying on the bed before her, she realized she was seeing for the first time exactly what that price was.

The medical bay hadn't been built to handle this many patients. Stretchers and make shift beds lined corridors for nearly a quarter of a deck outside the main room. The most critically wounded were laid in the clinic itself, where the doctors would have the quickest access. It was here where Ensign Mabel laid in a mess of flesh and bandages. Half her uniform was fused to her skin where the flame had melted the fabric. Her skin was a grizzly mess of white and red, and her entire head was hidden by bandages. A set of tubes were hooked to her neck and veins to monitor the life that still resided within her.

"She's going to live." A white-suited man said reassuringly to the admiral. Cain couldn't bring herself to look away from her officer. "We still have to monitor for infection, and we'll need to clone skin grafts for her, but she's almost certainly going to pull through."

The doctor paused. The whirr of machines and occasional moan of agony ran through the room. It smelt of burnt flesh and chemicals. "Unfortunately, the fire was most intense near her face. We weren't able to do anything for her eyes..." He looked unsure of himself. He probably was, Cain thought. "Implants can do a lot these days, almost like a real pair of eyes, but..." He sighed. "not enough for her to resume service with the fleet."

"We can drop her off next time we're berthed." Cain said flatly. She noticed her chest rising softly. "Is she awake?"

The doctor shook his head. "She's too doped up on meds to be experiencing anything resembling useful consciousness for the next few hours. "

"I see." Cain replied curtly. She walked up to Mabel and crouched beside her. She reached out for her shoulder.

"Please, don't touch her." The doctor said hastily. "It could spread infection." The admiral nodded.

Helena placed her hand on the bed beside her. "You did good." She brought her voice to below a whisper. She stood up. _I'm going to make them pay for what they did to you. For Agata, Anubis, Osiris, Artemis..._

* * *

If Captain Sheridan's head were to get any hotter, the crew could have used his skull as a kettle. The commander sat in his personal quarters, which were barely the size of a major city studio, but still remarkably spacious for a Hyperion class cruiser, with two equally flustered individuals. Jeremiah, his trusted XO sat in the chair beside him, and Mister Zhao, the man whose face Sheridan had come to associate with everything wrong with the world, sat opposite of the two.

"I think," _Lexington's_ captain began with great restraint in his voice, "We've been _very_ reasonable to you so far."

The blue clad man before them swallowed. "This mission co-"

"When you sent our ship to the post-apocalyptic ruins of some long-dead civilization, I said, 'sure, why not!'"

"We knew the first planet was only a piece of the puzzle. It lead us-"

" _And then,"_ Sheridan said with little regard for the man's rebuttal. "When you sent our ship into orbit of a life-bearing world whose star looked _damn_ close to going nova, I was nervous, but I went along with it."

"Captain, as the ranking Earth Force official on this ship, you have absolutely no right to-"

"And _now,"_ Sheridan finished with almost a laugh. "Now that we've finally lost the Minbari fleet that for whatever reason tracked us like a shark to blood, you want us to go..." He shook his head.

"You want us to go," Jeremiah punched the provided stellar coordinates into the computer on their desk. A star system presented itself on its display "Here."

"There." Sheridan said accusingly. "To a dual-binary system with absolutely jack and all in the way of navigational aids." He clasped his hand to his forehead, searching for the right words. "Mister Zhao, your an archeologist, I understand that. So let us give you a basic lesson on hyperspace navigation."

Zhao crossed his arms as Jeremiah laid his arms on the table. "You see, distortions are to hyperspace what a wave is to the ocean."

"Stars are so massive," Sheridan continued, "That they make those distortions in hyperspace even from all the way in normal space. Now, most stars are far away enough that the distortions are small, and a good ship with an experienced crew can, slowly, make its way through beaconless hyperspace."

"Fortunately, you have us." Jeremiah said through a feigned smile.

"But as you get closer to a star, those distortions get bigger." The commander explained. Zhao looked as if he wanted to reach across the room and strangle the life out of Sheridan. Sheridan, and the PPG around his belt, would have gladly allowed him to try. "There's a reason every Earth colony is in a one-star system."

"But the funny thing about dual-binary systems..." Jeremiah picked up. "Is they have _four times_ as many distortions to deal with, and those distortions make navigation exponentially more difficult."

"And each distortion carries a risk of knocking us off course." Sheridan concluded. "Are you aware Mister Zhao, that no ship lost in hyperspace has ever returned home?"

Zhao took a breath, looking as if he were collecting his thoughts. "You and I both know we're losing this war." Zhao confessed. "We need to take a few risks if Earth is to have any chance of winning."

"I'm more than happy to talk about risk." Sheridan said, stretching out his arms. "I risked nearly blowing up this ship fighting off a Minbari attack, remember? I'm more than happy to risk my life, _and my crews life,_ if it's for Earth." He leaned across the table towards Zhao. But only if we have some vague idea of what we're risking our lives _for."_

Zhao stroked his forehead. He sighed. "We've been over this Captain. Our mission's finer details are classified."

"You have two options." Sheridan stretched his hand out. "One, you tell me what the hell is going on, and I _consider_ going along with this God forsaken mission a little longer..." He opened the other hand. "Or two, I turn this ship around, head straight back to Earth, and you can have me court martialed if you'd like once we get there."

The room fell silent. Sheridan clasped his hands together on the table. Zhao's eyes laid on the ground. He shook his head again. "Fine." He said simply. "Fine, you win." He turned to Jeremiah. "You were right." He smiled. "It's a First One ship. A big one, and we've been following the clues of the civilization that built the sucker through this whole mission. Now, I'm willing to bet my life it's sitting somewhere in that star system."

Jeremiah grinned. Sheridan's face remained unchanged. "I though Earth Force was above rumors."

"Things change when the extinction of your species is around the corner." Zhao said grimly. "Captain... John, this ship could be our last, best hope for survival. If you turn around and run back to Earth, your condemning every man, woman, and child back home to death."

John looked to Jeremiah. Then back to Zhao. "How about a compromise." He suggested. "We'll take our ship to the edge of the system. Stick our nose in. If it looks survivable, I'll take us in deeper. He pointed a finger at the man. "If it looks too bad, we're going home."

Zhao smiled. "That's all I can ask. Thank you, captain. And Earth thanks you."

"Just leave my quarters, please." Sheridan demanded more than asked.

Zhao stood up and made his own way out the office and through the zero-g environment he'd learned to hate since this mission began. He breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully, the captain would buy his First One story for just a little longer. That's all the time he needed. He'd lead his species to their key to winning the Minbari war, but it had nothing to do with the First Ones. Of course, they wouldn't have risked their lives for anything less. And they certainly would never have believed the truth.

* * *

"Incoming dispatch from Picon." Dualla hadn't finished her sentence before Adama was over her shoulder, grabbing the fresh print out from the mission before the ink had finished drying. The commander read it over silently, then nodded his head in approval.

"Looks like the admiralty has finally accepted the fact we're not fighting Cylons. Bunch of Gods damned geniuses." He said proudly. Nagala's personally leading a counteract on board the Battlestar _Atlantia._ "

"So when are we joining the cavalry?" Tigh asked.

"We're too late." Adama said, folding the sheet of paper and storing it in his pocket. " _Atlantia_ and about a hundred other ships jumped in fifteen minutes ago. They're saying they've had no contact with the enemy anywhere in the system." Adama paused. Good news in war was so rare, he always savored those moments he was lucky enough to deliver it. "Canceron is officially back under Colonial control."

Cheers and victory cries erupted through CIC for the second time that day. Adama didn't join in with the cheering, though he didn't settle it down this time.

"Sounds like we scared the bastards off." Tigh said smugly.

Adama shook his head. "I don't think so." He replied. "I think we'll be seeing them again much sooner than we'd like. For now..." He turned to his navigation officer. "Mister Gaeta, have _Triton_ plot us a jump directly to Canceron orbit, now that we know our jump drives work. We have a fleet to rejoin."


	7. On the Homefront

A quick note: The Colonials will _definitely_ be making contact with the Earth Alliance... in the next chapter. It's coming! I promise!

* * *

Bitter, numbing cold. Cavil had always hated the hassle that went into resurrection. Especially when, as machines, they shouldn't have a need to go through such unpleasantness. He gasped for breath, filling his new lungs with air for the first time in this body's existence. He fought the feeling of dystrophy in his muscles as he struggled to claw his way out of the tube of goo that nourished their humanoid bodies prior to use. Someone wrapped a towel around him from behind. He craned his neck around.

"Back so soon, One?" Asked the blonde-haired woman. A Six. She was clad in a single piece of pure, white fabric. Cylons had a far less diverse sense of fashion than the Colonials.

"Was there a problem?" Came the Three beside them. D'anna, as she was also referred to. "Were you discovered?"

" _Oooohhhh_..." Was all Cavil could get himself to muster. Being vented into space was _not_ a fun way to go after all. Who knew? The One used his towel to wipe the goop off his face. Slowly, his memories flooded back into the pile of mush that he loathed to call his brain, and the feeling of utter dread returned. "Well, frak me. This complicates things."

"What complicates things?" D'anna questioned. "What happened, Cavil?"

"I was on a military station, near Canceron." Cavil started, rubbing the last vestiges of goop of his forehead. "There was an attack. And, obviously, it wasn't us."

D'anna grinned, and let out a laugh. "Are you saying the humans are getting a head start on our work? A little civil war, perhaps?"

Cavil didn't laugh back. His breathing remained frantic. "They weren't human ships, D'anna." Three's smile dropped.

"Cavil, they've got to be human." The Six insisted. "All of our basestars are accounted for."

One stayed mute. Three and Six exchanged a worried glance. "Who else could it have possibly been, Cavil?" D'anna asked. Rhetorically, Cavil assumed.

"Gather the others, immediately." One demanded. His demeanor took the other models aback. "We need to talk."

* * *

A tall, well-kept man looked into the camera as he stepped onto his platform. A dozen microphones had been neatly organized atop the podium before him. President Richard Adar couldn't have spared the time for a public appearance, so an address from the Capitol Building would have to suffice. He ran his finger down the single sheet of cornerless paper on his podium, silently mouthing the words a final time. He looked up to see a middle aged woman smiling encouragingly at him. He returned the gesture. Laura had always been there for him, even through the darkest moments of his administration.

One of his staffers counted down on their fingers. The camera's light flicked to red. The operator gave a thumbs up. Adar's face turned solemn on command. His words were slow and deliberate. "People of the Twelve Colonies," He began. "Yesterday morning, on a day that began much like any other, an armada of ships, whose origin remains unknown, appeared over Canceron, and proceeded to launch a savage and unprovoked attack." He paused. Just for a moment, his eyes darted back to Laura. "In the four hours it took to drive them off, eighty-thousand souls were reunited with the Gods. The crews of eleven battlestars, dozens of escort ships, thousands of fighter pilots, and the twenty-thousand men and women aboard Artemis station willingly and without hesitation gave their lives to protect the countless civilians they shared an orbit with, and the billions more souls on the colony below."

Adar wiped tear from his face. They'd become second nature to summon on command. Of course, it was easier when he didn't have to fake them. "We've just learned beyond any shadow of a doubt that we're not alone in the universe. We don't know who these monsters are, where they came from, or what they want. They've made no attempt at contact, and they've ignored all attempts at diplomatic overtures." He paused briefly after each sentence. The president turned his sheet of paper over.

"What we _do_ know, is that we have made them pay for every last inch of space they took. Our fleets destroyed more than a dozen of the alien warships, inflicting equal, if not greater, losses. We smashed their ships. We beat them back. We've demonstrated to these aliens that our Four Systems will not be going quietly, and proved to ourselves that we have the capacity to fight back." The key to a good lie was to mix a dash of truth with it. And the key to keeping morale high was not to let your people know how badly things were actually going.

"As we speak, every tool, every cog, every nut and bolt in our worlds is being retooled for the single purpose of keeping our people safe at night. I urge you to take their example. As of this moment, we're not Caprican. We're not Gemenese, Saggitaron, or Libran. We're human. One people, with a common purpose. United, we can beat back these murdering things. So long as these Twelve worlds stand together, these demons, who started this war, will never be victorious." Adar folded his paper. He nodded to the camera. "So say we all."

The camera's red light flicked off. Almost instantly, Adar collapsed into his chair with his hands clasped on his face. He shook his head. "Oh Gods." He muttered. "Is this what the first President felt like, during the Cylon war?"

Laura came up beside him and placed a comforting hand on his back. "I thought you were good." She consoled. "A little overdramatic, but you always had a flare for that."

Richard looked up to greet Laura's eyes. She brought him into her embrace. "Now," She said, patting his back. "I think you have some business to attend to."

From his luxurious home on the outskirts of Caprica City, Gaius Baltar gawked at the television with mounting disbelief. Throughout his life, Gaius always managed to turn any bad situation back into his favor. His cunning had brought him a long way through the years, but now even that seemed to be failing him. Like billions of others, he hadn't taken his eyes off the news broadcasts since they started coming in. They'd been scant at first, but now the reports came like a torrent. He sat transfixed as video recordings of massive blue warships sent chills down his spine. They'd played the same clips of those menacing ships emerging from some sort of blue portal at least a dozen times now. The ships were replaced with a female news anchor.

" _In an unprecedented act of political cooperation, the Quorum of Twelve and People's Council voted unanimously mere moments ago to declare a state of emergency, following President Adar's address yesterday evening. The vote bestows emergency powers on President Adar that no sitting official has possessed since the Cylon war. In response to concerns of abuse, Adar's administration assured-"_

Baltar grabbed for the remote and flicked the channel. After twelve hours, He couldn't stand them any longer. His face dropped at the sight of some male panelist taking the anchor's place.

" _-leading to the nationalization of a significant number of civil shipyards over Scorpia, in an act corporate lobbyists are calling a gross overreach of government-"_

Baltar hit the switch again.

" _-rare demonstration of religious unity, with candlelight vigils being held from Saggitaron to Gemenon, to honor the tens of thousands who died yesterday in defense of-"_

"For frak's sake, give me something else!" He called out at the television, pleading it to comply.

" _All I'm saying is, we shouldn't be taking everything the government says at face value. If you actually take the time to look at the physics, none of it makes any sense-"_

This time, he simply shut the TV off all together. He slammed the remote down on his couch. Baltar grabbed at his hair, nearly pulling it out of his head in frustration. "This isn't happening." He muttered defeatedly. "This _can't_ be happening."

A pair of warm, familiar hands pressed into Baltar's neck, massaging down to his shoulders. "Get a grip on yourself." The woman behind him muttered. Hailey had slowly turned from his acquaintance, to his coworker, to his lover. It was a symbiotic relationship, of course. "We seem to be holding them off, for now."

Baltar shot up and turned to face the blonde-haired woman he'd come to share a very particular type of working relationship with. He shot his arms out in frustration. "They've postponed the CNP upgrades indefinitely!" He cried out. "That program was _two years_ of my life. It was everything I've been working towards, the culmination of my entire career." He shook his head. "If it had done what I thought it would do, it would have put me on good terms with the president himself. And now it's all frakked off into nothing!"

To Baltar's surprise, his lover smiled. She crossed her arms. "Our entire people are at war with an unknowable enemy. And all that's running through your mind is how it's going to affect your career." She laughed. "You really _are_ the most amazing man, Gaius."

"Don't give me that." The doctor snapped back. "Thirty billion people are worrying about that. Let me pick up the slack of worrying about everything else."

"You're not the only one who had something invested in that program, you know." She countered, adding a hint of malice to her voice. "I had my own interests."

"Ah, yes, that's right." Baltar replied mockingly. "To give your corporation some inside knowledge of the defense mainframe. Truly a noble cause."

"As opposed to your own quest for personal glory?" She accused.

"At least _I_ had ambitions that amounted to more than a paycheck." He yelled out as he paced back and forth across the living room. "So what the hell am I supposed to do now? Just stand around here impotently, while-" A set of bangs at his door made him yelp. The woman grinned in amusement. Baltar's neck shot to the door. The veil of night made it impossible to make anything out. "Who the frak is that supposed to be?" Hailey shrugged.

Baltar peered through the peephole to find a pair of unusually well built men waiting outside his door. They were clad in dark blue suits that carried no markings that Gaius could make out from inside the house. Each of them wore sunglasses and had some sort of electronic device implanted in one of their ears. He looked to his friend for guidance. She merely prompted him to open the door. And so, cautiously, he did just that.

"Doctor Baltar?" The man to his right asked in a deep voice. Baltar nodded slowly. "We need you to come with us."

Gaius blinked. "What?" was all he could think to say. "What… Who are you? Come where?" He looked behind them. It was still pitch black outside. The dim glow of Caprica city was visible far off into the horizon. "It's _four in the morning."_

The same man produced a square, metal badge from his pocket. It was a sleek chrome and black. Baltar's eyes widened at the insignia adorning the metal. _Colonial Intelligence Bureau_ was proudly etched into it's surface. He struggled to find words as he realized he had a pair of CIB agents standing at his door.

"President Adar has requested your presence." He explained further. "We'll take you to a facility in Caprica City proper. I know this must be overwhelming, but it'll all make sense shortly."

The cogs within Baltar's brain went into overdrive as the agent's words set off a blaring alarm in his head. "President Adar…" Baltar began slowly. "Requested _me,_ by name?"

"You and a handful of others." The man replied. He gestured towards a large silver van taking up most of Baltar's driveway. "We really need to leave. We'll explain everything on the way there."

"Um…" Baltar said. He bit his lip. The doctor pointed his thumb behind him. "Can I bring my friend?"

* * *

This wasn't the first time Commander Adama had seen the Colonies on a wartime footing. This was, however, the first time he had seen such an armada ever assembled in one place. _Galactica's_ aging Dradis system struggled to track the positions of all the hundred plus ships that surrounded the planet. Nagala's fleet had retaken Canceron with nothing in the way of resistance, which left Adama both relieved and concerned.

"Sir?" Called Felix Gaeta. Placed before him was a binder as thick as the commander's fist. He'd spent most of their time in orbit going over and confirming the IFF of every ship in orbit. Normally, the process would take a few minutes. With this many ship, he'd been at it significantly longer. "A pair of cruiser-sized contacts jumped in a few minutes ago. I can't find any match in the book for them."

"More tourists?" Asked Adama, making his way across CIC to peer over Gaeta's shoulder. He studied the console for himself. Sure enough, the two contacts were squawking military IFF and had taken up formation, but the computer couldn't identify what type of ships they were. Sure enough, he recognized them straight away. Adama let out a laugh and grabbed Gaeta's shoulder. "Not much of a history buff, are you?"

The lieutenant craned his neck around to face the commander. "Sir?" He asked inquisitively.

"That triangular shape is a dead give away." The commander noted. "Those ships are _Osiris_ class. Pocket battlestars. They were thrown together in the first days of the Cylon war, when we needed every ship we could possibly field." Adama laughed quietly to himself. "The last of them were decommissioned over thirty years ago. Your book wouldn't have any record of them. Where the hell did the brass even find those?"

"You'd be surprised how well kept some of those husks can be." Colonel Tigh remarked from the center of CIC. "Military's probably picking through every boneyard and scrap heap in the Colonies. I'm more surprised they found enough people who still know how to crew them."

"They probably _didn't."_ Adama pointed out as he resumed his position beside the colonel.. He had the sinking feeling those ships would be little more than meatshields if any actual engagement broke out. The nervous silence resumed throughout CIC.

"Have you heard Adar's statement yet?" Tigh asked, trying desperately to break the monotony of looking over equipment manifests hour after hour.

"I couldn't have avoided it if I tried. It's been all over the wireless" Adama replied with resentment dripping from his voice. "A dozen enemy ships destroyed. What bullshit."

"He's probably trying to keep morale up." Saul suggested. "Otherwise people'd lose hope, just give up."

"All he's doing is giving people a false sense of security." Adama growled. "Look how well that worked for us last time around."

"They must have played the footage of us blasting that big, blue, bastard to hell at least a hundred times." Tigh remarked proudly. "They're getting a lot of mileage out of it."

"Hope we have a little more to show for it next time they come around." Adama said sharply. Tigh dropped the subject and resumed examining his manifest.

After much deliberation, the commander produced a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. "I got a letter from Catherine in the last data packet."

Tigh blinked in disbelief. "Your ex-wife? When's the last time you got a word out of her?"

"Not since the divorce." William replied. He could scarcely believe it himself. "Fleet probably pulled a few strings to get letters from home to us this quickly."

"Well? What did she say?" Tigh asked, dripping with anticipation.

"Mostly asked about Lee, if I've heard anything about him." Adama shook his head. "She's living in Boskirk city nowadays, on Virgon, with her new fiancee. She can't even get out of her apartment. Recruitment stations are backed up at least three blocks."

Tigh whistled. "Probably a bunch of kids looking to be a hero." He sighed. "Can't say I blame them, the same thing was running through my head when I signed up the first time around." The colonel paused. Hesitantly, he posed his next question. " _Have_ you heard from Lee?"

Adama shook his head. "He was assigned to the Battlestar _Achelous_ before the war broke out. I checked the logs, it hasn't seen combat yet." A pang of guilt throbbed in the commander's stomach. "Lee was promoted to Captain, a couple months ago. He finally made CAG." His eyes turned away from the Colonel. "I couldn't make it to the ceremony." The light from CIC reflected off the commander's glasses, hiding his eyes from view. "Have you seen the casualty rates for fighter pilots? They're in the thousands."

Tigh laid a comforting hand on his friend's back. "He's an Adama. He'll do alright for himself."

William raised his head, rejoining the Colonel's eyes. He nodded, breaking the line of thought. "Have you heard from Ellen?"

Saul looked as if he was resisting the urge to spit. "No, I haven't. And I don't think I will. Probably better that way."

" _Commander Adama!"_ Called an overly eager voice from across the room, to both the officer's surprise. The two men turned to find a young man dressed in a brown suit making his way across the command room with his hand outstretched. "My name's Brad Fletcher, network specialist. I assume you've heard I was on my way?"

Adama hesitantly shook the man's hand. He batted an eye at Dualla. She shrugged, her eyes guilty. It should have been her job to keep track of new arrivals. He returned his gaze to the excited man. "Can't say that I have. Who are you? And who permitted you to come aboard this ship?"

"Oh." The man's voice dropped markedly. "They put me on one of the resupply raptors that had some room to spare. They must not have told you."

"They must not have." Adama confirmed. "What brings you to _Galactica?"_

Fletcher handed a clipboard to the commander. Adama skimmed over it as the man resumed speaking. "I've been assigned to oversee the installation of networking infrastructure on board _Galactica._ Integrating your computer systems to communicate with one another."

"I see." Adama said suspiciously as he sifted through the documents. "And who authorized this?"

"It's a fleet wide initiative." Fletcher replied. "To bring the older ships closer to the standards expected throughout the fleet."

Adama slapped the papers back onto clipboard. "No." He said sternly.

"No?" Fletcher repeated curiously. "What do you mean?"

Adama shoved the clipboard back at Fletcher. He took it, giving the commander an odd look. "I'm going to be direct with you." Began the commander. "A lot of people died on this ship because people wanted a faster computer. Under no circumstances am I allowing a networked computer system on this ship. That's final."

Fletcher looked dumbstruck as the commander stepped away while the specialist's brain was still busy processing his words. He looked at his clipboard, then back to Adama. "These orders come directly from the admiralty themselves. You _can't_ just say no to them."

"I just did." Adama retorted. He looked to Tigh. To his surprise, the colonel looked less than thrilled at Adama's stance.

"Bill, maybe we should think about this." Saul suggested. Adama shot a glare at him.

"Commander.." Fletcher began nervously. "If I recall the details of your victory yesterday, you used _Triton's_ computer to calculate the combat jump, didn't you?"

Adama remained silent. "That's correct." Tigh said, answering on his behalf.

Fletcher took a breath before continuing. "Without _Triton's_ networked computer system crunching all the numbers for you, you could never have calculated the jump in time. _Triton_ would have been lost with all hands, and _Galactica_ probably would have been destroyed along with her."

"At the very least Bill, every soul on _Triton_ would have been a write off." The colonel confessed despite the apparent frustration building up inside his friend. "Including Kara." Saul added after a moment.

"Computer systems have come a long way since the Cylon war." Fletcher explained. "There's so many layers of security involved, the whole thing is practically impenetrable."

"I seem to recall hearing the same thing forty years ago." Adama replied sharply.

"You owe your life to a networked computer." Fletcher said accusingly. "Letting us do our job here could save it again."

"First sign of trouble, we'll disconnect the entire thing." Tigh suggested. "It'll save us from having to rely on the rest of the fleet to calculate jumps for us." He smiled weakly. "And Felix will be happy to finally have a little more desk space."

Adama felt like his eyes could burn through Saul's chest. With great effort, he turned back to Fletcher and grabbed the clipboard back from him. He took a pen from his pants pocket and produced a signature at the bottom of the page. He offered it back to Fletcher. "Don't make me regret this."

Fletcher took several steps back the moment he had his papers back in hand. "We'll be out of your hair as quickly as possible." With a quick nod, he turned and made his way out of _Galactica's_ CIC.

Adama shook his head. Allowing the installation of networked computers on his ship was sacrilege. "Twenty four hours ago, I would have rather quit my post than sign off on that."

"A lot can change in twenty four hours." Tigh replied solemnly.

* * *

Kara Thrace had managed to find her way to the admiral's office without getting herself lost for the second time that time that day. _Atlantia_ was significantly larger than _Triton,_ but despite the greatly increased volume, advancements in automation allowed roughly the same crew complement. Holloway's ship would still be limping back to Aerilon, Kara thought as she found herself in front of the red-colored door with the name _Fleet Admiral Adriana E. Nagala_ printed in gold lettering. She pressed the keypad on the side of the door, and waited. Her eyes darted around the hallway impatiently. Admiral Nagala had apparently requested her presence personally, after word of their successful attack had disseminated throughout the fleet. Given how short they'd been of victories yesterday, it was obvious to Kara why the admiralty would be so quick to jump on this one.

The door slid open. Kara snapped herself back into the real world, resting her arms straight at her sides. A short, wrinkled woman with jet black hair greeted her. Despite her meek appearance, Nagala's reputation alone gave off an imposing aura. Kara raised her right hand in salute. "Lieutenant Thrace, reporting as ordered." She said before returning her arm to her side.

"At ease, lieutenant." Nagala said more softly than Thrace would have expected. She stood aside, and extended her arm towards her personal quarters. "Please, come in."

Kara allowed her muscles to relax as she stepped in, then worried her jaw might hit the floor. Even for a ship as big as a Mercury, Kara never expected an admiral's quarters to be this spacious. A bed, couch desk, shower _and_ a bath. Towards the back was a personal refrigerator that, through its transparent door, looked to be exceptionally well stocked. Along with all that, she even had room to stretch her feet. The damned place was bigger than her apartment in Caprica City! Thrace quickly noted they weren't alone. A younger woman with similar rank pins indicating her as an admiral was already seated on the couch. Before she could finish gawking, Nagala had shut the door and spoke again.

"Have a seat." The admiral indicated. "Make yourself at home. Would you like some coffee?" She asked as she reached to pour herself a cup.

Kara opened her mouth to accept, then thought better of it. Silently, she was steaming at the woman. "No, thank you." She said simply before taking a seat on the leather couch opposite of the other woman. Who was she, anyway?

"Suit yourself." The admiral replied, adding a small cube of sugar to her cup and having a seat in the chair opposite of Kara. "I believe you've heard of Admiral Cain?"

"Heard of her, yes. Never met her." Kara replied. So this was the famous Helena Cain. The woman who'd made admiral faster than any officer in military history. Cain's eyes looked dead. Almost as if she hadn't slept a wink since the attack began. Then again, Thrace had barely managed any either. Her wing mates kept popping up in her dreams.

"Don't worry." Nagala said. A smile formed on her lips. "You'll be seeing her a lot more often."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "Admiral?"

Nagala took a tiny, leather box from the table beside her. She opened the lid, revealing two sets of silver wings buried in the lining inside. She handed the box to Thrace.

Cain leaned forward. "You're not going to do a very good job at being my new CAG if you're not even on my ship." She said slyly.

"Also, your out of uniform." Nagala pointed out as Kara took the box from her. "Put those on before we court martial you, _Captain_ Thrace."

Any day before now, Kara's eyes would have lit up and she'd be ready to put on her trademarked look of satisfaction. Instead, her expression remained unchanged. She stared quietly at her new rank pins. They felt empty. She took them out, and slowly pinned them to her collar. Both admiral's eyed her expectantly. "Thank you, sir. I'll wear them well."

"That was a damned crazy thing you did out there." Nagala said admonishingly. "Nearly got all of you killed. But it worked."

"To be completely honest, it was luck." Kara confessed. This wasn't the first time she'd been congratulated, and after the initial effect had worn off, it felt hollow ever time. "We played the only card we had and hoped for a best. Working out as well as it did was just a fluke."

"I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit." Nagala said as she placed her mug on table beside them. Kara knew Nagala wasn't a young woman, but she was surprised how much of her age the admiral's face betrayed. "You seized an opportunity that no other pilot would have seen. But, more importantly, you demonstrated a willingness to think out of the box. And that's what we're going to need more than anything else."

"When I launched my attack on that alien fleet, I fought them like they were Cylons." Cain began, twirling her fingers. "Every commander did. We didn't know any better. But you took the little knowledge you gleaned from that first attack over Canceron, and used it to your advantage."

Thrace's eyes shifted to the floor as Cain spoke. The admiral's wouldn't understand. They couldn't. "It was _Adama_ who put his ship on the line. Without him, none of it would be possible. He should be the one with a new pin on his shirt."

"Believe us captain, there are already whispers of him making rear admiral." Nagala rebutted. "But that process is going to take longer."

"He deserves it." The anger bubbling at the pit of Kara's stomach boiled over. Her restraint failed her. "He sure as hell did more to protect the people down there than you did."

The color vanished from Nagala's eyes. Her face seemed to fall off her. Cain's eyes widened in shock. " _Captain!"_ Helena cried out in shock. "What the frak do you-"

"Admiral." Nagala said, stopping Cain's sentence cold. "Care to elaborate, captain?"

Kara's hands were shaking, hoping against hope she was in a dream. Did she seriously just say that out loud? Nagala eyes felt like daggers. Well, she was committed now. "Four hours, thirteen minutes." Thrace started "That's how long it took your fleet to jump to Canceron. _"_ She struggled to keep her voice level. " _Four hours._ You should have been there in _five minutes!_ What the hell took the fleet so long to get off its ass?"

"Thrace, you are _way_ out of line." Cain said harshly. Kara could almost feel the venom shooting out of her mouth.

"It's alright, Helena." Nagala said, raising a hand towards Cain. She drew a deep breath before she spoke again. "When Canceron's defense fleet was wiped out, we jumped dozens of ships in to reinforce. Most of them were cut to shreds. At the time, we assumed the Cylons had some type of super weapon they were using to cut through our forces so easily." The admiral seemed to be doing a far better job at maintaining her composure than Kara expected. Honestly, she'd expected the fastest court martial in Colonial history.

"We didn't want to risk sending larger fleets, which would have left our military strongholds relatively undefended, until we had a better handle on what was going on." Nagala continued to explain. "Hence our more conservative approach."

"And what about the people on Canceron?" Kara interrogated, pressing on despite all the sirens in her head. "Was the government just going to abandon seven billion people?"

Nagala slowly shook her head. "It would have taken the Cylons little more than a few minutes to nuke most of the planet's major cities from orbit. Once the window of opportunity to intercept them had passed, there wouldn't have been much of a population left to save." Her tone had changed drastically. Her words were slow and deliberate. "So, yes, we wrote off Canceron's population in favor of strengthening our defenses around the rest of Cyrannus."

"My fleet had actually been recalled." Cain interjected. "We never received the order because of the damage to Canceron's orbital network."

"If it's any consolation, captain," Nagala picked up, her voice raising slightly. "The colony itself doesn't seem to have been hit _at all._ "

"The moment we realized what was really going on, I ordered every ship we had to spare to plot a jump for Delta." Nagala gave off a far more laid back vibe than Kara had expected. Honestly, she came off more like a grandmother than the supreme commander of the Colonial military.

Kara nodded slowly. She'd already heard that bit of news. Despite being completely open to attack, the planet itself had been left completely untouched. Which only left them with more questions about the alien's intent. She still felt a tinge of anger at her superior's disregard for the lives on the planet, but it wasn't her place to say. "What's done is done." She confessed, ending her line of inquiry. She turned to Cain. "So when do I ship out?"

* * *

"...Then the hull gave out, I was vented in space, and that's the last thing I remember before waking up here."

The collection of humanoid models gathered around Cavil each held mixed expressions of disbelief. A Three was the first to speak up.

"Cavil…" A Three began, flanked on both sides by silver-sheened centurions. "Did you fall down a flight of stairs and break your neck or something, and this is your attempt at saving face?"

Cavil shot a glare at Three. "I _wish_ I was joking. Our ships should be confirming my report shortly."

"Actual, alien life." A Four remarked. Like the others, he was clad only in white, in contrast to his darker skin. " _Intelligent_ alien life. Everything we knew told us it wasn't possible."

"Well," Cavil started mockingly, "Obviously we need to revisit those odds."

"This changes everything." A Two expressed. Leoben, as his model was referred to, paced across the room apprehensively. "The plan, the attack…"

"You think I don't know that?" Cavil yelled out. "Kill off humanity as punishment for what they did to our kind, justice triumphs throughout the universe, and we inherit the galaxy, with our destiny firmly under our control." Cavil turned to each of the models, gauging their reactions. "Simple, straightforward, three-point plan."

"Only it just went out the fraking window." Three remarked. "Our virus won't be spread throughout the fleet, meaning we won't be able to shut down their defenses." She paused, and a smile grew on her face. "That's assuming, of course, the alien race doesn't just wipe them out before we do."

"It was _our_ place to exterminate humanity! Not theirs!" Cavil protested, practically in a scream. " _Our_ vengeance, _our_ justice!"

"It saves us the trouble." A Five said smugly. "Maybe we should send them a gift basket as thanks."

"What do we do?" A Six piped up, her face twisted in horror. Cavil recognized her as Natalie, a name she had christened herself with. "If they cut through that station like it was nothing, they have to be more powerful than us."

"We don't have any idea about _why_ they're attacking the humans." Said an Eight. She looked to Cavil. "For all we know, humanity might have provoked them, and they'll ignore us."

"No." Cavil replied simply. "We have agents nestled in all levels of Colonial government. If the humans had any contact with the aliens before now, we would have already known about it."

"They could simply be conquerors." Four suggested. "If humanity is anything to go by, organic life is naturally aggressive. The aliens could be wiping them out preemptively."

"If that's the case, they won't stop with humanity." Two noted. "They'll do the same to us if they ever get the chance."

"They probably don't know about us." Five offered. "We can stay out of the way, watch the fireworks, and the aliens will be none the wiser."

Three rolled her eyes. "If they don't know about us already, they will shortly." Five shook his head as Three pressed on. "Either they'll find out from humanity, or they'll just stumble across us in a few years."

"All the more reason for us to get the hell out of here." Cavil said with absolution. "Tell our operatives to commit suicide, wait for them resurrect, gather the fleet and put as much distance between us and Cyrannus as we possibly can."

"For all we know, we'll be running towards whatever patch of space the aliens call home." Three countered. "If they're out there, they'll find us. Whether it's tomorrow or in a century."

"D'anna's right, we can't hide forever." A Six said agreeably. "It's better to figure out what there intentions are sooner rather than later."

"And just how do you propose we do that?" Came Four skeptically.

"Simple. We just ask them." Three said matter-of-factly. "Send raiders to scout the outer system, then jump a basestar in once we find them. We appear as non-aggressive as possible, and try to make contact."

"Your plan sounds like a fantastic way to get a basestar destroyed." Cavil said dismissively. "While tipping them off about our existence, I might add."

"I'm with Cavil." Five said, nodding his head. "Stay out of the way and let them sort it out."

"They'll find us anyway!" Three protested. "Might as well find out _now_ what it is they want while we have the initiative."

"You know what? Let's put it to a vote." Cavil declared, throwing his arms in the air. "All in favor of giving the aliens a wide berth?"

Four nodded. "We can't take the risk."

Five looked to Cavil. "You've never led us wrong before."

Natalie and D'anna turned to each other. Natalie nodded. She looked to Cavil. "The Six's vote with D'anna."

Eight took a breath. Cavil looked at her expectantly. She returned Cavil's gaze. Then, reluctantly, she shook her head. "The Eight's vote with D'anna as well."

"So the vote's three to three." D'anna noted. She turned to Leoben. "Which leaves the Two's as the tiebreaker."

Leoban turned to Cavil. A shred of anxiety was showing in the One's eyes. He turned to D'anna. She crossed her arms. Leoban closed his eyes.

"If the aliens are hostile… and they find out about us…" Leoban began, opening his eyes and facing Cavil "We're all dead." Cavil grinned.

"Then it's decided." Said Cavil smugly. "We'll-"

"But," Leoban continued. Cavil's smile vanished instantly. "If they're hostile, they'll find out about us anyway. God's plan has to involve them somehow. We might as well figure out what role they'll play now." Leoban turned to Three again. "The Two's vote with the Three's."

"You fraking idiot!" Cavil cried out. "Do you even realize what you're voting for? Our survival is at stake here!"

"The vote is over, Cavil." Three declared triumphantly. "The decision is made. We'll start launching raiders into Cyrannus now. If the humans see them, they'll dismiss them as more of the aliens."

Cavil fumed silently to himself as Three walked past him, grinning while she placed her hand in the liquid data stream at the center of the room, beginning the process of transmitting their orders to the rest of the Cylon fleet.

* * *

Doctor Baltar sat in a prolonged, uncomfortable silence along with the two men that had absconded with him half an hour ago. The van's interior was far more spacious than Gaius had expected, giving him an entire row all to himself. The passenger compartment was separated from the driver's hatch by a thick, metal wall coated with very intricate looking displays and equipment. Baltar glanced behind him to check that the chrome-colored car that had been trailing them was still in view. It was close enough for the reflection of its headlights off the van's own chrome sheen to light the entire section of road. Hailey was in that car. The agents had been very adamant about that.

Baltar made a nervous smile at one of the agents, the one who had been slightly more talkative back at his home. No response. The doctor cleared his throat. "I don't suppose I could get your name?"

"Agent Mendez." The man replied briefly, with a slight nod of his head. "This is Agent Verma. We have some material for you to look over before we arrive." Mendez produced a sheet of paper from the compartment at the edge of his seat. Baltar flipped it and began looking it over. The seal of the President's office was proudly etched into the document.

"Well, Agent Mendez…" Baltar began, regaining some of his lost courage. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me why the President wants me, personally?"

"I'm afraid I can't." The blue-suited man replied. A smirk came to life on the edge of his lip for the briefest moment. Maybe these men could show emotion after all, Baltar thought. "Not that I could, even if I wanted to. _We_ don't even know what the President wants."

"But you said-"

"I lied." The agent said sharply. He gestured to the document in Baltar's hand. "We need you to sign it. It's a nondisclosure agreement."

Baltar laid the paper face-down on his lap. "I'm not signing anything without my lawyer present." He said defiantly. "Who, by the way, I'm entitled by law to have with me upon request. So I'm requesting him."

"I'm afraid we can't allow that, doctor." Mendez replied curtly. "It's extremely confidential."

"I know my rights." Baltar said smugly, raising his voice. "The Articles of Colonization entitle me to legal representation. And I'm not doing another thing you ask of me until I get him."

"That right was waived." The agent's words cut through Baltar's stomach like a hot knife. "By President Adar himself. Now, please, sign it."

The first lights of Caprica City whizzed past their vehicle as Gaius took a pen from the agent's hand. Caprica City was the grandest metropolis in the Four Systems. With a population of over seven million, the city stretched for miles past the ocean's coast. Dozens of skyscrapers towered as high as a kilometer above the ground, and some even taller still. Absent, however, was the bustling airspace Baltar had grown accustomed to. On any day, you could make out the silhouettes of a hundred spacecraft coming and going from the sky-scape. Today, there were none to be seen. Most civilian air traffic had been grounded for the time being. Baltar found the stillness surreal. He could feel his hand trembling as he filled out his signature and handed it back.

"Good." Mendez stated, stuffing the paper in his suit pocket. "We're almost there. The building is down the next block."

The first glimmers of dusk were lighting the horizon as their van turned the corner. Traffic was unusually slow. A great deal of businesses weren't even bothering to open today. Finally, the imposing building that had to be their destination was coming into view. Baltar recognized it instantly. A massive dome of glass and steel, ten stories tall, sat in the center of the great complex. Jutting out from the dome was a series of enclosed passageways, connecting it to various smaller structures. The ground of the entire complex was coated with concrete, save for a set of holographic water geysers lining the main path to the dome. The driver handed a card to a gate attendant, and the security wall lining the structure opened for them.

Baltar felt like smacking himself in the forehead. His mind had been too preoccupied to remember the route he'd once taken every day for years. The Caprican Institute for Progressive Economic Development. CIPED. He'd worked on his last contract here, over two years ago. The connections he made from this building catapulted him into the CNP development program. The building used to be primarily a civilian operation, concerned with the research and development of cutting-edge technologies. Some of the first FTL drives had been designed here. Then, the Cylons happened, and piece by piece, it had grown to be almost entirely a military affair.

"Right this way." Mendez said, opening the door and urging Baltar to take his lead. The agent put a hand to his earpiece. "Yeah, we have him. Tell Olsen she can meet us in the front lobby."

"Olsen?" Baltar, who intended to make sure he was close enough to hear, questioned. " _The_ Olsen?"

" _The_ Mad'am Avery Olsen. Vice President of the Colonies." Mendez said without bothering to turn around. Or change his rather brisk pace, Baltar noticed as he tried to keep up. "Don't keep her waiting."

"So, um… I don't suppose there'd be any chance Adar himself is in that building, too?" Gaius asked hopefully.

"Very doubtful." Mendez said bluntly. "For one, Adar's schedule is extremely packed for obvious reasons. Two, the President and Vice President are being held in separate locations for the near future. Just in case."

"Ah, yes." Baltar said. His muscled tensed up as he realized he'd be standing next to one of the biggest political targets in the Colonies within a few moments. He wondered if any amount of potential reward justified that risk. "Just in case."

A set of automatic doors opened at the trio's presence. Above them, a holographic projection of the Four Systems rotated slowly near the roof of the lobby. Blue and silver walls decorated the spacious room. To Baltar's surprise, There was no secretary at the main desk. Instead, only a pair of formally dressed women were there to greet them. The one on the left, a taller, middle aged brunette with an expensive looking pearl necklace draped over her outfit, Baltar recognized immediately as his vice president. The one on the right, a younger, glasses-wearing lass, he didn't have the faintest idea about. Though a second glance at the woman sealed his intent to change that.

"Doctor Baltar." Olsen said, smiling as she offered him a hand. He gladly accepted it. "A pleasure to meet you. I wish it could be under better circumstances."

"Mad'am Vice President." Baltar replied, beaming. He realized he should probably be looking a little more solemn, and corrected himself. "It's an honor to meet you." He turned to the younger woman beside her, and offered a hand. "And you are?"

"Ms. Stiebel." She answered agreeably. "But you can call me Uilana." Oh Gods, and she had an accent too. Light and airy. Libran, maybe? Baltar struggled to read her expression. "It's good to meet you, doctor. You've done a lot of good work in the past."

"Ms. Stiebel is one of the Colonies foremost experts on Dradis technology." Explained Olsen. "She's had a hand in designing a half dozen Dradis systems for military use in the last five years."

"Though lately, I've spent most of my time in R&D labs on Picon." Stiebel confessed. "Cosmic wave-mapping, entanglement-tracking, synthetic aperture…" She counted the list off on her fingers. "We're constantly testing and refining new methods for Dradis systems. Anything that could give our forces an edge."

"Sounds very… important." Baltar replied. He'd been working with the military for years now, but he'd never had to touch anything as specialized as a Dradis system. What could they possibly have to gain here? Not that he was complaining about the eye candy, anyway.

"Doctor Baltar," Olsen began, "As I understand it, you've had your hands in the defense mainframe for the last two years, haven't you?"

Baltar's eyes dotted to Olsen. "Yes! Yes I have. I was contracted to work on the upgrade to the Command-Navigation Protocol. Almost entirely a one person job. Security and all that, but... one does what they have to."

Olsen nodded understandably. She smiled. "We have a lot to talk about, doctor. The Colonies needs your expertise. Both of yours. If you two would follow me, please…"

* * *

Alyt Lorann inhaled slowly as a device directed a powerful blue light onto his forehead. He could feel the regenerator's energy dousing his head in a cocktail of charged molecules that stimulated his body's natural healing abilities. The Minbari let out his breath just as slowly as he took it in. Lorann had refused to accept any form of medical treatment for his wound until his ship had emerged from hyperspace alongside the rest of their fleet. Abidor had been enraged to learn the humans had, by some fluke of the universe, scored a victory that destroyed one ship and forced a second, badly damaged cruiser into retreat. That, in addition to the forces their own battle group had lost near the moon of the human colony, had left a sour taste throughout the Wind Sword fleet.

Losing a ship wasn't completely unheard of. The humans had scored kills in the past, but always with crippling losses. But a total victory? In open space? _That_ was unheard of.

"You can get up now." Came Khala's voice. The light ceased. She set the device down. "Take a look." She said eagerly.

Lorann felt along the crease of his forehead. The skin was almost as smooth as it had been, save for a soft bump that began near his left eye and continued down to the start of his cheek. The alyt stood up, and examined himself in a mirror laid on one of the tables in the medical bay. His eyes were instantly drawn to the reddish scar plainly visible along the left side of his face. He felt along the scar again, watching his reflection as he did so.

"We could have it healed completely, of course." Khala said from over her commander's shoulder. "But I don't think you want to." She felt along her commander's face with the lightest of touch. "It's a battle scar. The rest of the clan will be jealous."

Lorann laid his arms back at his sides. He tilted his head, trying to get used to the new feature on his body. "I've never had a scar before." The commander said.

The young Kor smiled. "None of us have."

* * *

Lorann's arms remained clasped together within the sleeves of his ceremonial outfit, eyes fixed forward, while he stepped off his shuttle and boarded the flagship of their fleet. A pair of crewman, clad in blue and white, were there to hail him. Lorann bowed, a gesture the two returned in unison. "Shai Abidor has agreed to meet with you in his chamber." One of them said. "We can take you to him now."

All of this was more a formality than anything else. The Minbari tended not only to stand on ceremony, but build a house over it and call it home. "I would be honored." Lorann said graciously. The two turned, and thus began their slow journey to the core of the Sharlin. After some time, the two left him to enter Abidor's holographic chamber on his own.

The alyt entered to find Abidor looming at the end of the room, facing away. He stared at a chart of what portions of the human system had been mapped thus far. Lorann paced towards the Alyt'sa, emphasizing his steps to make no secret of his presence. He waited, patiently, for the Shai to acknowledge him. The problem was, Abidor never did. Lorann stood beside him to find his eyes locked in focus. The alyt bowed.

"You haven't responded to our hails." Lorann ventured. "We started to suspect there might have damage to our communications system."

Abidor came back from whatever world his mind had left his body for to acknowledge Lorann. "And what did you want, alyt?"

"Our ships have been requesting new orders." Lorann explained. "We should set course for Minbar. Tell the Grey Council what we've discovered."

"You haven't received new orders," Abidor said, looking down at his officer, "Because they haven't changed. Our mission remains the same. Find Starkiller, and subdue this system."

Lorann blinked hard. He wanted to speak, but couldn't fathom what to possibly say. "Shai..." He said respectfully, deciding on his words one by one. "We lost three ships on our previous attack. These humans are different. Their ships are more durable, more numerous, not to mention their propulsion system is so incredibly different." He hesitated. Lorann desperately wished he was better at reading his commander's face.

"What I'm saying, alyt'sa, is we're taking an unnecessary risk." Lorann pleaded. "We could bring back a larger fleet, guarantee a swift victory." He looked at the star system projected to the front of the room. "Attacking now could be a grave mistake."

"Mistake." Abidor said, emphasizing each syllable. "I made a mistake, during the battle." He continued to Lorann's dismay. "I should never have split up our fleet. It left us vulnerable. If we had struck as one great wave, we would have cut through them with nothing to stop us."

"We could bring back a hundred ships. Two hundred." Lorann continued. "And to be honest, Shai, something is drastically wrong. These humans don't hail from Earth, I'm certain of it. We should inform the Grey Council before we move forward."

"This mission isn't their place." Abidor rebuked. "This is _our_ mission. Mine."

"This war is our entire _race's_ mission."

Abidor raised his arm. He pressed a series of buttons on the control panel mounted on his arm, prompting a great ship to appear above the duo. It was Minbari. Lorann recognized it as not just any Minbari ship, but the Drala Fi' herself. The late flagship of their entire fleet.

"The Drali Fi'?" Lorann inquired. "What does this have to do with our mission?"

Abidor waved his arm, and the warship vanished into nothing. "Have you ever met somebody, Lorann, who impacted you on such a deep level, you could have sworn your friendship transcended this life, and reached into the past?"

Lorann slowly shook his head. Abidor smiled. He'd never seen the alyt'sa smile before. "I can't say that I have."

"His name was Yalet." Abidor said, his voice soft. "From the first time I met him, decades ago, before I was truly initiated into the Wind Swords, he was a mentor to me."

"I think I've heard his name." Lorann said, searching his memories. "Alyt Yalet. It sounds familiar."

Abidor clasped the railing of his chamber. "He taught me how to hold a denn'bok. How to fight with one." The old warrior took a small, ribbed device from his belt. He hit a switch on its underside, and the ring expanded into a long, metal staff. "This was his. When he first started training me, he'd strike one of my ribs every time I did something wrong. With a real one. Not one of the pretend wooden staffs the lesser clans use for training."

"It's a beautiful piece." Lorann admitted. Abidor's smirk grew. He clicked the button again, and the staff retracted. He returned it to his belt.

"I'd crawl home with more than half my ribs broken some sessions, but it worked. I learned very, very quickly." Abidor admitted. He turned away from Lorann, gazing back at the four slowly rotating stars. "He died on the Drali Fi'. He died because Starkiller was too much of a coward to face him in open battle. And I'm going to be the one to avenge him." Abidor batted an eye towards Lorann a final time. "I'm finding Starkiller. The true nature of these humans, whatever it may be, doesn't matter."

Lorann swallowed hard. He bowed. "I understand, Alyt'sa. Please forgive the intrusion. I'll see myself back to my ship."

"There's nothing to forgive you for, Lorann." Abidor said encouragingly. "A subordinate needs to be able to question his superior. We'll see each other in battle soon."

Lorann bowed again, and left without another word. He was offered an escort back to his shuttle, but politely refused. Once he was back on board, he set the autopilot for his ship, and activated the controls. He counted the seconds until he was out of the hanger bay before tapping his comm panel.

"Kor Khala." He said urgently. "I need to talk to you immediately. Meet me in my chamber once I've boarded the Sha'Kan. It regards Abidor. Come without delay."

* * *

Doctor Baltar had begun to grow suspicious of whether or not Olsen actually knew where she was going. She'd led them through a series of identical looking corridors that wound through CIPED's dome, finally arriving at the structure's center. A large, circular shaft jutted from the floor of the building up to the ceiling. The vice president placed her hand on a pad, waited for a pair of soft, affirming beeps, and waited. Moments later, a set of elevator doors opened. Baltar stepped in with her and Stiebel. Olsen clicked in a code, the doors shut, and Baltar felt himself press against the floor as the shaft accepted her orders.

Baltar snuck a glance at Stiebel. She quickly noticed, and made a nervous smile before returning her eyes forward. The doctor quickly averted his eyes. "So... Uilana." He began. "That's an interesting name. Pisces, isn't it?"

"Libran, actually." She replied.

The doors slid open to reveal a massive, brightly lit chamber. It's walls were lined with blue and white, with equipment strewn throughout. A dozen men shuffled about the laboratory, some with electronic data pads or cartridges. Olsen led them through the chamber. Baltar tried to pick up the whispers of the other men, but couldn't make anything out. One of the scientists, a man dressed in an all-white lab suit, paused from his writing to greet them. Olsen touched the man's shoulder.

"Professor Aldrich," Olsen began. "This is Doctor Baltar, you've probably heard of him." She said as Baltar gave his best smile, offering his hand to the professor. "And this is Ms. Uilana Stiebel. Nobody knows the in's and out's of Dradis technology better than her."

Aldrich took Baltar's hand. Most of his lower face was covered in a graying beard. The guy had a hell of a grip. "Good you both could join us." The professor said, taking Stiebel's hand. "I wish I could say we have a lot to catch you up on, but we honestly haven't scratched the surface."

"Professor Aldrich is a theoretical physicist." Olsen explained. "We jumped him in from Virgon not long after our fleet liberated Canceron."

"We've spent every moment since then trying to glean every scrap of information about the beings that attacked us as we can." Aldrich informed them. He turned back to the lab. "Unfortunately, we don't have a lot to go on."

"We doknow the alien's use some kind of stealth technology to hide from our sensors and targeting computers." Olsen said grimly. "It's making it impossible to get an accurate firing solution on their ships from anything outside of point blank range."

Gaius's heart felt like it skipped a beat. "On the news, it sounded like we were holding our own out there." He muttered hopefully.

Olsen smiled weakly. "Doctor, you're an intelligent man." Baltar felt the uncertainty inside him grow a size or two. "Surely you understand the need to keep people's spirits up."

The doctor's lips quivered. "Yes, of course Madam Vice President." He said, nodding.

"So, what else _do_ we know?" Stiebel asked with anticipation dripping from her voice.

"I'll let Aldrich fill you in on that." Olsen said. She took the scientist's hand again. "The work you do here will represent the Twelve Colony's greatest chance of finding a defense against the invaders." Gods, what was he doing here? He wasn't a physicist or engineer!

The older woman turned to Baltar. "We've made arrangements to move both of you into temporary housing just outside the facility itself." _Oh no no no._ Despair filled Gaius's heart. "You'll be provided with a living stipend, personal security, and anything reasonable you might request." _I have all of that already!_

A plan of action was forming in Baltar's head. He could fight this. First, he would contact the Caprica City Times. File an anonymous report about civil rights abuse. Bribe the right people to get it on the front page. His lawyer would demand to know why he was being detained against his will. He would say he couldn't comment under penalty of treason. Yes, It would take time, but-

"Once this war is over, you'll go down in history as one of the saviors of the Colonies." Olsen said encouragingly as she clasped the doctor's hand and squeezed. "Our grandchildren will grow up learning about what you did here." She smiled. Her teeth were unnaturally white. "I must go. Again, the pleasure was all mine. Good luck to all of you." She clasped his shoulder. Baltar tried to say something, but all he managed to do was move his lips silently. He turned to watch her shuffle to the elevator and vanish behind its doors. He faced Aldrich again.

"Good to have you both here." The professor said. He turned to the lab and urged them onwards. "Now, Uilana, I want you to take a look at something. We just got our hands on a hull fragment from one of their ships, and I think you'll find it particularly interesting..."

* * *

" _Patrol duty!?"_ Colonel Tigh yelled out. He looked like he was ready to throw the clipboard across the room. "Risk our asses, nearly get all of us killed, score the _one, singular_ victory of the entire war, and we get told to watch the fraking door?"

"Orders are orders, Colonel." Adama said flatly. He took the clipboard from his XO before he beat some poor officer over the head with it. "Watching for signs of enemy contact is just as important as anything else." In truth, he was grateful for the quiet assignment. He'd expected the brass to give his crew the royal treatment. Throw a hundred reporters on the ship, document every moment of their battle. Give the people something to rally around.

"It's still bull." Tigh said, shaking his head. "Where are we bound?"

Adama indicated a patch on the star chart rolled out along CIC's main console."We're to take up orbit around Styx. Pretty empty chunk of space." Styx was a small, desolate world orbiting billions of kilometers from Delta's sun. Ancient vents on the planet's surface gave it a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulfides, but the world had nothing in the way of useful resources, meaning it'd been largely left alone through the thousands of years of Colonial settlement.

"It'll another hour or so to finish loading all the equipment onto the ship." Tigh remarked. The fleet had been shipping them Raptors, pilots, and of course, nuclear warheads. Everything that had mostly offloaded before they were sent on their final tour before decommissioning. Now, the ship was more heavily armed than it had been during the Cylon war.

"Our birds will be doing most of the heavy lifting, recon wise." Adama said as he studied a gridded map of Delta. "We'll serve as their base of operations. Give them longer legs than they'd otherwise have." He called out for Felix Gaeta. The lieutenant appeared in front of him and saluted. Adama ordered him to start plotting their jump. He budgeted at least an hour to calculate it. A proper one, this time.

"Actually, sir, give the order and we can calculate the jump in a few seconds." Gaeta said, grinning. "The nav computer was the first thing they retrofitted." Adama looked decidedly unimpressed. Felix soldiered on. "It can shoot out numbers in an instant that would have take me an hour or so to do by hand."

"I see." Adama said flatly. He couldn't help feeling as if somebody was slowly twisting a rod lodged in his heart every time word of the upgrade came through CIC. "I want you to calculate the jump manually, then run the same numbers through the computer and make sure they match up."

Gaeta's face deflated before the commander's eyes. "Sir, the nav computer's perfect at its job. I mean, why would-"

"I gave you an order, lieutenant." Adama growled, shooting the officer a glare. "Now carry it out."

Felix nodded, accepting defeat. "Yes, sir. I'll get on it right now."

"Good." Adama turned his face back to CIC's central console as Gaeta made himself scarce. "This better work out."

"I know it's hard." Saul replied, lowering his voice. "I'm not a fan of the idea, either. But there's a lot of people out there depending on us."

Adama's gaze remained transfixed on the heart of CIC. He watched the small dots of the resupply Raptors inched their way across the display. "It's like we're carving out a piece of her soul."

"Do you mean the old girl's soul..." Tigh started. "Or yours?"

The commander shook his head. He took in a deep breath. "Resupply shouldn't be too much longer now."

* * *

Sheridan could have sworn he'd felt the comforting pull of gravity in his dreams. Officer's rarely spent this long on an Earth Alliance warship without stopping off to berth at some point. He'd grown tired of the daily exercise just to stave off dystrophy. Or the constant clink-clank of his magnetic boots that kept him moored to the ground. He rubbed his temples in a vain attempt to wash the grogginess of his face. Getting a good night's sleep with the haunting growl of hyperspace pushing at your ship's hull had always been a hassle, despite dealing with it night after night. The bridge had called him up. It was Jeremiah on the line. They requested him up on the bridge immediately, and wouldn't explain why. _Couldn't_ explain why, were his exact words. The twin doors serving as the entrance to _Lexington's_ bridge slid open.

"What's the situation?" Sheridan called out as he entered the ship's command center.

"We exited hyperspace to drop a beacon off twenty minutes ago." Explained the female navigation officer sitting to the fore of _Lexington's_ bridge. Garcia had always been a hell of a navigator. Earth Force sent nothing but the best for this mission, after all.

The ease of being knocked off course in the unforgiving environment of beaconless hyperspace restricted their ship to short hops. They'd jump to hyperspace, travel a distance, then jump out to get their bearings and, occasionally, pop off one of their very limited beacons. It took forever to get anywhere, and taxed the hell out of the engines, but it was the safest way to go about their journey. As they approached a star system, the distortions meant those pauses grew more frequent.

"We're just inside the heliosphere of the nearest star." Jeremiah said as he stood up to greet his captain. "The moment we entered real space, our comm array was flooded with artificial radio waves. And I _mean_ flooded."

Sheridan nodded. Artificial radio waves meant somebody was probably living in the system. And if somebody was living there, that made for the potential of first contact. "So the system might be inhabited. Do our translators recognize the language?"

Jeremiah hesitated. He looked to Garcia, then the rest of the senior staff. He gritted his teeth before turning back to John. "That's the thing, sir..." He said grimly. "We didn't _need_ our translators. Most of it is coming through in plain old English."

Sheridan's face twisted into confusion. "English?" He repeated in disbelief. "Are you sure?"

"We went as far as to disconnect the translator completely, then give it another listen." Jeremiah continued. "We're definitely sure."

Sheridan ran through the possibilities in his mind as he took his seat at the center of _Lexington's_ bridge. "It could be a Minbari trap, to lure us in." He suggested.

Garcia shook her head. "There's _way_ too much comm traffic. It wouldn't be coming from one fleet." She rebuked.

The captain stroked his chin contemplatively. "Well, you said it's in English. Can we make out anything specific?"

Silence again. It was beginning to wear on his nerves. "Well? Can we?" Sheridan pressed.

"There's one transmission in particular..." Garcia began slowly. "It's being broadcasted over and over, from multiple points in the system."

"We gave it a listen, and that's when we called you up here." Jeremiah confessed. "You're going to want to hear it." He nodded at Garcia. She tapped a few controls on her console, and a deep, powerful voice roared to life on the speakers.

" _Yesterday morning, on a day that began much like any other, an armada of ships, whose origin remains unknown, appeared over Canceron, and proceeded to launch a savage and unprovoked attack..."_

Sheridan's eyebrow rose as the voice started."That's definitely English." He confessed. That shouldn't be possible! "How in the hell-"

"Keep listening." Jeremiah pleaded.

And so he did. And with each passing moment, the world seemed to make less and less sense to the captain. Who were these people? What was happening to them? And where in the great galaxy had Earth lead them?

" _As of this moment, we're not Caprican. We're not Gemenese, Saggitaron, or Libran. We're human."_

Sheridan's eyes widened in shock. His neck snapped towards his XO " _Human?_ What the _hell?"_ He let out as the voice continued to speak. Jeremiah and the rest of his staff stayed eerily silent.

" _So long as these twelve worlds stand together, these monsters, who started this war, will never be victorious. So say we all."_ The voice stopped. The speakers beeped.

"That's the end of the transmission." Garcia stated.

"What..." Sheridan started, his mind abuzz. "How... in God's name..."

Jeremiah shook his head. "We haven't the slightest idea."

Sheridan shoot up from his seat. His hand clasped his forehead as he paced to the fore of the room. "This can't _possibly_ be right." He argued, shooting his arms to either side. "I mean, come on. This has got to be some sort of trick!"

"We've looked at this from every angle, captain." Jeremiah said, maintaining his demeanor. "They're not Minbari, and it sure as hell isn't the Earth Alliance out there."

"I've isolated a handful of other transmissions." Garcia started from her seat. "Most of it's garbled, a lot of it turns to white noise this far out."

"They refer to themselves as the Colonies." Jeremiah said, taking a step towards his commander. "That's the only thing we know about them."

Colonies of _what,_ Sheridan thought to himself. Not Earth, that was for certain. "And the fact something attacked them." He picked up. "But who? This whole area of space is desolate." That much they'd all known since the mission's inception. The whole chunk of space they were in, stretching for hundreds of light years, was a mass of dust clouds and gas giants. Nothing worth investing money into, and what few garden worlds did exist were too remote to be worth the hassle.

Jeremiah shrugged helplessly. They'd been fighting a losing war for months, but Sheridan had never felt this powerless. "I don't understand it either, John."

"Hell!" Sheridan cried out. "We haven't seen sight or sound of intelligent life since we left for Earth, save for our ship and-" He froze mid-sentence. For a moment, his heart stopped dead. His mouth hung open as his brain slammed into the horrific thought like a freight train.

"Captain?" Asked a concerned Jeremiah.

"And that Minbari fleet that's been trailing us." Sheridan finished, collapsing back in his chair. "Those people, whoever they are. They're using our language."

It took a moment for the revelation to strike his XO. Jeremiah's hair stood on end as the implications of Sheridan's words hit him. The rest of the bridge crew exchanged worried glances. Jeremiah licked his lips. "You don't think..." He started. He covered his mouth. "Oh Jesus Christ."

"I could be wrong." Sheridan hoped desperately. "And I really, _really_ hope I'm wrong."

"What do we do now?" Garcia ventured. "The hyperspace distortions are insane in this region of space. If we go in any deeper, there's a good chance we'll never find our way back."

Sheridan looked to the navigation display showing the closest of the four stars. A type K2V, a good bit smaller than Sol. His mind was running a thousand miles an hour. If they had actually done it... If they'd lead that Minbari fleet to...

But his crew. His people. He would be risking all of their lives, and for what? Just the possibility? What if he was wrong? What if he was sending them right into a trap? Or it was some other race, and none of this involved them?

"It's your call, sir." Jeremiah said calmly. "I'll back you up, either way."

Sheridan laid his hands on the arms of his chair. He took a breath, mentally committing to his choice, for better or worse. They had to know. He had to. "Mrs. Garcia, prep the ship for another jump to hyperspace. We're going in" He commanded, before looking to his crew. "Does _anybody_ have any objections to this?"

After a few tense seconds, no reply. Jeremiah gave a faint smile. Sheridan returned it, but the feeling of dread was still firmly lodged within him.

"One more thing." Sheridan said curtly. "Wake Zoah. I think we should have another chat with him, don't you?"

Jeremiah's smile grew ever so slightly. "I think I can get on board with that idea, sir."


	8. New Arrivals

The aft compartment of a raptor wasn't exactly spacious to begin with. Forcing a person share it with crates upon crates of parts and supplies should have been considered a war crime. Ensign Kendra Shaw's legs cramped from the strange and unnatural angles she had to position herself in, and she had to fight back the churning sensation in her stomach. Though that was less from the flight itself, and more the anxiety of what lay ahead for her.

"Command couldn't have spared one fraking raptor for a personnel transport?" Shaw asked bitterly.

"No, they couldn't." Came the curt reply from craft's copilot. "The military's requisitioned a quarter of the civilian shipping fleet just to move hardware fast enough. You think they're going to skip out on a shipment so your pampered ass can have more leg room?"

Kendra bit her lip. This wasn't how her career was supposed to go. The military was going to put her in the fast lane for her real goal. Her mother had pulled a few strings to get her into the academy, a fact her superiors were all too eager to remind her of. She'd serve four or eight years, letting the armed forces be a stepping stone to something greater in civilian life. The chances of there being an actual shooting war in that timeframe was nil. Or so everyone thought. She hadn't even had the chance to graduate before she was being thrown into a war zone.

"Scorpia shipyards, this is raptor eight-four-seven, on final approach. Requesting permission to enter docking queue."

" _Raptor Eight-Four-Seven, this is Shipyard Control. Heavy traffic is expected on your current approach. Advise redirect by 30 degrees port, new bearing..."_

Kendra tuned out that identical, droning voice every traffic control operator seemed to possess. She grabbed hold a handle on the ship's hull and pulled herself up. Blood flowed into her legs like a thousand pin pricks. The junior officer gleaned out the canopy, taking in a view that made her, just for a moment, forget her anxiety.

Scorpia Shipyards was the grandest facility in the Colonies – Full stop. Kilometers of steel and glass dominated her vision. Even from this distance, the full scale of the complex wasn't visible. Even their battlestars, the very symbol of Colonial pride, looked like toys beside the gargantuan station. A half dozen of them were berthed along various ports of the shipyard. More ships than she could hope to count swarmed around her field of view. Scorpia Shipyards was a hive of activity. And their raptor was just another drone.

Second by second, one particular vessel grew ever larger. Mercury class battlestars were among the most impressive warships ever constructed. They had their own fighter factories. They grew their own food. Though, dwarfed by the enormous fixture it was moored to, its true scale was hard to make out. Kendra's stomach dropped as the great black streaks across its hull became visible. Mercury's had dozens of meters worth of armor divvied up across multiple layers. Despite that, whatever it fought had left its mark. Tiny, one man crafts surrounded the warship, shooting bright sparks at the warship's hull. The repair crews weren't wasting any time. Given how deep the wounds seemed to cut, she wondered if they'd make a difference.

The ship's nameplate had taken a battering. Dark streaks ran across the lettering, though her lights still shone just as bright. _Pegasus._ Shaw's first assignment.

" _Raptor eight-four-seven, you have clearance to land, call the ball."_

" _Pegasus_ , on final approach, you have the ball."

The craft reoriented itself. _Pegasus_ rotated, then appeared upside down, owing to their ship's thrusters translating the craft to align with one of the warship's flight pods. Artificial gravity did weird things to your perspective. The starfield vanished as the battlestar's landing field enveloped them. Great metal doors began closing behind them as the automated docking computer brought the raptor a gentle landing, parallel to other sets of raptors. _Pegasus's_ flight crews would have their hands full. The pilot muttered something into his microphone, and removed his helmet. Kendra carefully shuffled out of her compartment, carrying her 30-pound duffel bag of personal items.

 _Pegasus_ was a big ship, and Shaw had a CO to report in with. She schlept her bag over her shoulder, and started for a set of metal double doors marked as the exit. It whooshed open, revealing a crowded, noisy walkway. A team of repairmen were welding something onto a bulkhead. Somehow, a pair of officers could make conversation over the racket as they walked down the row. Kendra closed her eyes, and took a breath before taking her first steps towards her new life.

* * *

Kendra Shaw had absolutely no idea where she was going.

She turned left to face yet another identical looking hallway. _Pegasus_ was a fairly new ship, and it showed in its blue-silver triangular highways and the multitude of interfaces dotting them. She must have past a hundred people by in the last ten minutes, and not a single one even acknowledged her existence. She took note of a computer terminal at the end of her hallway, which, of course, lead to another dead end. As she stepped up to the display, the screen took note of her. It shifted from _Pegasus's_ emblem to a menu screen. The military made such a big deal over the gadgets their latest ships came with. She wondered if one of those happened to be a map.

 _Standing By,_ read the text centered in yellow font at the bottom of the screen. A dozen options presented themselves on the display. She raised a hesitant finger. _Enviro settings. Communications. Maintenance log. Location._ Ah!

She tapped the display. A top-down layout of what she assumed was the deck she was currently on appeared. Well, that wasn't terribly useful. She tried zoom out of the image. All it did was move the layout around.

"Can I help you find something?"

Shaw inhaled. She turned to find a tall, thin figured blonde smiling curiously at her. Oddly, she wore no uniform. She hadn't noticed until now how quiet this deck was relative to everywhere else. The two of them seemed to be the only people around. "Come again?"

"You looked a little lost." The blonde stated. "Thought I'd lend the new recruit a hand."

"What makes you think I'm new?" Shaw replied, making a mental note to dial back her attitude.

"Well... aside from that rank emblem on your collar..." She started smugly, "I don't know a lot of officers who like to take a stroll around sewage reclamation."

Shaw looked to the side. She pressed her tongue to her gums, trying to formulate a reply.

"Here." The blonde said, stepping up beside Shaw. "Where are you trying to go?"

Kendra looked down. "CIC." She said meekly.

"Terminal," The blonde began. The monitor beeped in affirmation. "Show me the shortest route from here to CIC."

The picture transformed to an isometric view of the ship's interior. A set of blue arrows appeared in the bulkheads beside her, pointing her down the corridor.

"There you are. Two rights, then a left past the long hallway. There's a lift that takes you directly there." Gina said in a friendly tone. "Just have to know how to talk to them."

"Thank you." Kendra said genuinely. "Everyone on this ship seems to be in their own universe."

"People are still shaken up from the attack." She explained. "They're focused on their work."

"I suppose." Kendra replied. "I should report to Cain."

"Lucky you." She said. Her eyes drooped. Her face changed to a smile. "What did you say your name was?"

"Shaw. Kendra Shaw."

"Gina Inviere." The woman said matter-of-factly. The woman held out a hand. "I'm a network specialist, going over the repairs on _Pegasus's_ computer systems. I'm sure we'll be running into each other again."

"It'll be nice to have a friendly face around." Kendra said. Her spirits had lifted, if only a little.

"You should get going." Gina said. "Cain hates late comers. Trust me."

"Thanks for the warning." The officer said, starting in the direction of the arrow without another word.

The trip to CIC was blissfully unexciting. It meant less time to worry about what she'd find once she finally made it to her destination. She entered the lift, letting her bag support itself on the railing. It seemed to grow heavier by the second. _Cain hates late comers._ After some of her instructors, how bad could Cain be, really?

" _I don't know how the hell you expect me to do my job!"_ Came a disgruntled voice the moment her lift opened. " _Twenty. Twenty combat-rated vipers on the entire ship! Barely enough to fit one sorry looking squadron! And Gods help us if we want to actually rotate them!"_

Shaw watched from outside CIC's glass-coated entrance as a woman berated the gentleman in front of her. The man didn't even look angry. If anything, the expression on his face betrayed a sense of bewilderment.

CIC was smaller than Kendra had expected. She'd seen plenty of pictures, though they'd always seemed grander in her head. The various crewmen seemed laser-focused on whatever station they happened to be occupying. Perhaps trying to pretend not to notice the scene unfolding in their workplace. She cautiously tiptoed forward, debating if she should come back later. Shaw had heard Admiral Cain was unusually young for an admiral, but this woman looked barely out of her 20's!

"Captain, everyone on this ship knows conditions aren't ideal, we're-"

"Not ideal!" The young woman repeated. "And if the Squids jump in ten minutes from now, are we going to be able to contribute? What if we have to make an emergency jump, and we're stranded in some far-off corner of the system? We'll barely have enough cover to form a decent CAP!"

" _Pegasus_ isn't ready for front-line combat yet." The man said, managing to keep his voice level. "Most of the fighter's the fleet has to spare are being deployed to more capable ships."

"If _Pegasus_ can't defend herself, that just means we'll be relying on our fighter screen that much more." The woman rebutted. "I can't be CAG if I don't even have birds to command."

Captain? CAG?

Oh. She wasn't Cain. A wave of relief washed over Kendra.

"Difficult doesn't begin to describe it, I know that." The male said. "Believe me, you're far from the first person to lodge a complaint. But you were brought here for a reason. Work with what you can, and we'll get you new birds as soon as we can, alright?"

She crossed her arms. Her lips pursed. "Fine." She said curtly. "But I'm going to bring this up with Cain. Again."

"Then you can do that." He conceded. "But she's going to tell you the same thing. Again."

"If Cain can't help me, then I'll go to the shipyard's director, and let them know we're nothing but a liability if-" The captain's eyes caught Kendra's. The Ensign froze in place. "Did you come here for the show, or are you actually going to say something?"

She moved her lips, but nothing came out. Kendra shook herself back into her senses. "I'm... um, here to report in.."

"Captain Thrace, thank you for your report." The man said sharply. "You're dismissed." The woman shot her a death glare before storming off through the glass doors.

"Colonel Jurgen Belzen." The man said, reaching a hand out. Kendra felt tingles of sweat on his palm when she took it. "Welcome aboard _Pegasus._ Don't let first impressions fool you."

"So you're the XO." Shaw noted. "Where's Cain?"

"With the rest of the admiralty." He said, reaching for a transparent data pad laid on the console beside him. "What did you say your name was?"

"Kendra Shaw. Ensign Kendra Shaw." She said proudly. "I just made it aboard a half hour ago."

"Shaw?" Belzen asked, punching something into his pad. His face twisted. "You weren't due for assignment on _Pegasus_ for another three months."

"The board might as well have shoved us out the door after the Squids attacked." Shaw explained.

Belzen's eyes raised above the data pad. "You were supposed to be a Captain's assistant. What do they expect you to do if you haven't even finished formal training?"

"Whatever you need." Shaw replied. She gave a weak smile. "I heard you're in need of a new Dradis technician."

* * *

 _Lexington's_ hull groaned in agony as the ship fought to maintain its course in the increasingly violent environment of hyperspace. Sheridan could feel every beat of his heart pulse through his body, owing to the restraints that dug into his body and kept him from ricocheting across the room. The discomfort was a small price to pay. _Lexington_ was being thrown around like a pebble in the ocean, and there wasn't a whole lot they could do to change it.

"Garcia, estimate on our distance traveled?" Sheridan requested. The sweat gathering on his forehead was gathering into a thin film of salty water on his forehead. The officer dabbed an orange rag across his head, envious of the artificial gravity tech the other races took for granted.

"You might as well be asking me to pilot a canoe upstream in a rainstorm." Garcia snapped back. "Best guess, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million clicks."

"Might be time for a pit stop." Jeremiah piped up. "Poke our head out, get our bearings before heading deeper in."

Sheridan gave a swift nod of approval. "Lieutenant Garcia, take us back into real space."

"Thought you'd never ask." The nav officer replied, slamming a set of buttons on her console. "Dropping out of hyperspace in three... two..."

The groaning intensified, then ceased altogether. After a particularly long trip, hearing the cold silence of real space sounded almost as alien as the alternative. Sheridan tapped his fingers anxiously as the bridge crew waited for stellar cartography to update their position.

Garcia smacked her control console. "How in the..." She slammed her console again. "We're a good _half billion clicks_ outside of where we expected to be."

"You guessed a tenth of that!" Jeremiah cried out in frustration.

"What do you expect me to do? I can't navigate worth a damn in that gunk!" Garcia said with an air of hostility.

"We're still at the edge of the system." Sheridan remarked, studying their position on his built-in display. "Garcia, how much deeper in can you get us?"

"Without getting us killed?" The officer asked rhetorically. "It's hard to say. You can barely tell one direction from another in there. What we need..." She trailed off, tapping a few switches on her display. She grinned.

"Luck's on our side tonight." She said encouragingly. "There's a planet less than a day's travel time away at sub light. Our ship might have been drawn towards its gravitational wake."

Sheridan studied the small dot. Their sensors identified it as a planetary body. A small, lifeless world, roughly about Luna's size. Their spectrometers revealed a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, slightly unusual for a world this far from its host star. "And how exactly will this hunk of rock help us steer our ship?"

"What we need, is some kind of landmark. Some of the other races can navigate hyperspace by using the gravity well celestial bodies generate within hyperspace as natural beacons. Obviously, we're not that good, but if we were to get up close and personal with something like that, then it could give me the jumping off point I need."

Jeremiah's rubbed his leg. He motioned his head towards Sheridan. "It's taking a lot of effort just to get in. Getting _out_ is going to be another world of hassle."

Sheridan gave a barely perceptible nod. "It will be."

* * *

"That makes the fifth shipyard brought under government control," Continued the suited man with the first vestiges of graying hair covering his head. Across the table, President Adar stroked his chin contemplatively. "The Naglfar Complex over Leonis is trying to make this into a legal battle. The planetary government has dispatched marines to seize it by force, make an example of them."

Adar quietly absorbed the minister's report. His calculative gaze shifted to the mammoth window that demanded the attention of whomever entered his Cabinet Room. The Capitol Building commanded an impressive view of the seemingly endless skyline of Caprica City. It was a very intentional design choice. From the moment a person walked through that sliding door, be them a Quorum representative, local governor, or political rival, the sight of the metropolis would grip them. And at the center of it all, the President of the Colonies. It provided a silent, but unquestionable demonstration of his or her power.

"Of course, having the facilities is only half the battle." Adar's Minister of the Interior continued. "We're going to be ordering new ships and equipment at a scale that's going to make the first Cylon war look like a tiff. The price of rare metals is going to skyrocket in the short term, and in the long term, we're going to have trouble meeting demand at all."

"We can order a halt on civilian construction projects." Offered Adar's Minister of Commerce, a red-haired woman seated two chairs down.. His "We've already started contracting out extraction and refinement projects from Hera to Zeus. But those are going to take months to bear fruit." She cleared the hair from her face. "There is one other way to alleviate metal shortages, at least for the time being."

Adar nodded agreeably. "Rationing is practically a dirty word. Especially for Capricans who can't imagine going this year without the latest holo-screen model."

"It's more than metal we're going to have to start thinking about." The Interior minister interjected. "Those ships are going to need crews. Pilots, engineers, servicemen..." He shifted uncomfortably. "I think we need to start talking about the elephant everyone's been thinking of."

Richard Adar rubbed his forehead. His hands covered his eyes, leaning his head in. He raised his eyes up to meet his cabinet's, who were currently all eying him expectantly. He swallowed, and clasped his hands together on his desk. "Just come out and say it. Are we going to consider conscription?"

The word itself seemed to echo through the room. Conscription had been mandatory for all able-bodied men and women during the Cylon war. Serve your obligatory two years, and get out. The backlash after the war had been severe to enough to make the very mention of it political suicide.

The Minister of Defense, a gruff looking man seated across from Adar, cleared his throat. "Recruitment has been at a record high. Every time we show footage of a civilian dry dock being obliterated, or of _Galactica_ giving us a victory, we get another thousand enlistees." He paused, and gave a sigh. "However, if we're going to be taking losses like we did the other day on a regular basis..."

"I'm not ready to go that far quite yet, Takahiro. We're not in dire enough straits for that." Adar concluded, hoping to kill the issue in its crib. "I do want a list of all potential selectees compiled. In the event the situation deteriorates."

"That would be the pragmatic thing to do." The Minister of Interior replied.

"I want that list ready in one week's time." Adar ordered. "And a complete report on our logistics situation by the end of the day. Dismissed."

The dozen-odd members of Adar's cabinet gathered their belongings, and shuffled out one by one. Adar gazed down at his personal terminal, trying to fight off the stress that had been fermenting inside of him. Two days without a sighting was a blessing, and a curse. It meant they'd scared the aliens off for the time being. It also meant they were still completely in the dark about them. He looked back up, only to be startled by the gaze of his Defense Minister watching him silently.

"Michael? Did you need something?" Adar posed.

"You could say that." The man replied. "I needed to talk to you, privately. It's about our work at CIPED."

Adar scanned the room, then closed his terminal. CIPED had been at the forefront of trying to decipher what little information they had about their new enemy, but the reports had been distressingly scant. "Alright. What about it?"

"It's not helping." Takahiro bluntly. "Any hope we had of finding a way past the Squid's electronic warfare tech, I think we can give up. We don't have enough to go on, and what we do is only reminding us of how outclassed we are."

What little feeling of optimism had wormed its way into Adar's spirit after the cabinet meeting left him. He clasped his forehead. "And what else are we supposed to do?"

"There is one aspect we haven't considered." Michael Takahiro offered. "Something I didn't want to bring up in front of the others, and sure as hell not in front of the public." He set a small, unmarked file folder down in front of the President, and waited.

Adar watched him, expecting him to continue. When he didn't, he opened the folder and began scanning it. Confusion turned to surprise, then again into dread. "You cannot _possibly_ be serious about this."

"Our survival is at stake here, Richard." The minister protested. "We can't afford to leave any option off the table."

"Considering our options is one thing!" Adar continued, slamming a finger on the page. "If people got wind we were even giving this an idle glance!"

"Who knows, they might even get to live to impeach us."

The leader of the Colonies didn't offer a rebuttal. He slowly shut the folder, and slid it towards the minister. Slowly, his eyes rose. "There isn't a scientist in the Colonies that would touch this."

"Actually..." The minister said. "There's one at CIPED right now known for being quite outspoken on the topic of computer technology."

* * *

Colonel Tigh's muscles twitched compulsively. His fingers massaged the flask hidden under his belt, weighing the decision to sneak it out. He wouldn't need much. Just a sip or two, enough to take the edge off for the rest of his watch. Saul clenched his fingers into a fist and pulled his hand away. He couldn't. Not with Bill counting on him.

"Almost feels like we're back over Aquaria." Saul remarked, while Adama read over the latest dispatch. It'd been unnaturally quiet. It wasn't just the lack of enemy contact. The war meant civilian traffic was nonexistent.

"Not quite." The commander replied, setting the sheet of paper down in front of them. "Two days without a sighting. Gave us some time to catch our breath."

"Squids had to have come from somewhere. We'll find em."

"Squids?" Adama repeated incredulously.

Tigh shrugged. "Pilots've been calling em' squids because their ships look like giant fish." He chuckled. "Figured it's as good a name as any."

"Right." Adama said, shrugging him off.

Across the room, from his noticeably more well-kept console, Felix ran his hand over the empty space he'd never been accustomed to aboard _Galactica._ No massive binders full of registry codes to sift through. No manually punching in status reports from across the ship. The retrofit had made all of that a thing of the past, which meant the lieutenant could expend more effort on his actual job. Which, by extension, meant he had quickly become mind numbingly bored.

Gaeta rechecked the ship's instruments. Aside from the occasional raptor or viper flight, nothing had sparked up on the Dradis console since they'd jump into orbit yesterday. He reached up to switch screens when something caught his eye. He turned his chair to the officer seated besides him.

"Hey, Serina, take a look at this. Grid 4-3A. That point of light look funny to you?"

The female officer leaned over to study Gaeta's console. "It could be a comet's tail. HQ doesn't bother accounting for every chunk of rock in space."

"A comet tail this far out from the sun? No way."

"Maybe some kind of stellar event?"

"I don't think so." He rechecked his screen. "The frak?" He muttered under his breath. "It's getting brighter."

"That can't be right." She skimmed over Gaeta's panel. "That thing isn't acting natural."

"No, it isn't." Gaeta confirmed, feeling his nerves tense up. The officer craned his neck around and called out across the room. "Commander! possible boogie bearing roughly seventeen karam one-three-three. Can't make out distance."

"Define possible?" Adama queried, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Our photodetectors are picking up some odd activity in that region. Could be an engine wake, still too far out for a Dradis reading."

"Would take a hell of an engine to make a detectable wake that far out." Tigh piped up.

"And none of our ships are this far out." Adama said. "They would've reported in with us."

"Object's luminosity is still increasing." Gaeta reported, his voice rising. "It's definitely headed our direction."

"Colonel Tigh," Adama barked out. "Bring us to condition one. We're not taking any chances."

Saul grabbed the receiver off CIC's console and punched in a set of numbers. " _Action stations, action stations, set condition one throughout the ship. Possible enemy contact. Action stations..."_

" _Dradis contact!"_ Felix called out as Tigh's voice still echoed throughout CIC. "One boogie on the edge of our detection range. Coming in _fast._ Contact isn't squawking IFF."

Adama watched as a single, red circle popped into existence above his command station. Under it was the same menacing text they saw over Canceron. _Unknown._ And judging by the distance it was covering, it was hurling right for them.

"Prep alert fighters for launch." Adama barked. "And get a raptor to Picon. Inform Fleet Headquarters we've made contact with the enemy."

The instantaneous nature of jump drives meant they'd be sounding the alarm within minutes. Adama had seen to it _Galactica_ had at least one raptor crewed and ready to jump at the first sign of trouble. After all the drilling and all the dry runs, what came after the klaxon sounded should be second nature to his crew. Reinforcements would be joining them shortly. This wasn't like last time, when they'd been too blindsided to react in time. The fleet would be bringing down the hammer.

"Raptor away." Dualla reported after a sparse few moments. "They're spooling up their drives now."

"Target is starting to decelerate." Felix called out. "Distance ten thousand."

* * *

Another few minutes, and they'd reach the planet. John fought to steel himself for whatever they'd find as they worked their way closer to the sun. The level of comm traffic was beyond belief. Most of it was too degraded to make out from their distance, but it let them know whatever inhabited the system had a presence to rival Sol. Like an oasis in the desert that made up this region of space.

"Reading new contact!" Called the strong, British accent of _Lexington's_ radar operator. Harris was an older, balding man who looked somewhat out of place for his position. He'd been in service since before the Dilgar wars, usually on much larger ships. "Target is at edge of our radar range. Looks to be orbiting the planet."

"We knew they had a major presence in the system." Jeremiah said, hand playing with his console.

Sheridan nodded. Time to get some answers. "Helm, bring us to full stop. We'll approach slowly, give them plenty of time to notice us."

"Aye, cutting engines." Garcia said from her control panel.

"I've got solid reading on boogie." The British man reported. "So it can't be Minbari. We're just coming into range for a detailed scan..."

Sheridan watched the man's screen from his command chair in the center of the room. A wireframe of the contact began to materialize on the man's console. Sheridan's forehead wrinkled as the size of the ship became apparent. "How big _is_ that thing?

"Somewhere in neighborhood of fourteen hundred meters."

"Damned thing's about the size of a Nova." Jeremiah noted. "Those pods are pretty big. Could be some sort of industrial ship."

"Or a carrier." Sheridan suggested.

" _Ho-lee shit."_ The radar officer yelled out. The rest of the bridge crew turned to look in shock at the normally reserved man. "Target's gun ports are open. And _holy hell_ does it have gun ports. Reading dozens of weapon emplacements spread along contact's hull."

"Alright, I was wrong. _Definitely_ a warship." Jeremiah confessed.

"And it looks like they've noticed us." Sheridan said, a dozen scenario's racing through his mind. He didn't have a lot of time to make a call.

"We should open our own ports in turn." Garcia called out. "Show them we have teeth."

"No, _no_ gun ports." _Lexington's_ captain protested vehemently. "Do I need to remind you, that the entire reason we're in this damned war in the first place is because somebody was too quick on the trigger?"

"Multiple smaller contacts launching from target!" The radar operator cried out. "From their size, probably fighters. _Lots_ of them. That thing is a freaking hornets nest!"

"Garcia," Sheridan started. He cleared his throat. "I want you to prepare to send the following transmission on every frequency and channel we have on the books."

"And pray they happen to be listening." Jeremiah said nervously.

Sheridan nodded. "We've come this far. Might as well go all out."

"Ready to broadcast." Garcia said, exhaling hard.

Sheridan took a breath. He raised his voice. "To the vessel orbiting this planet, my name is Captain John Sheridan of the Earth Alliance Ship _Lexington._ We mean no harm. Our intentions are peaceful. Please respond."

* * *

"Alert fighters are out, secondaries are being loaded into tubes as we speak." Tigh said as he slammed the phone back into its receiver. "Raptor just jumped away. Fleet should be hot on our tail."

"All gunnery crews have reported in, DC teams at emergency response positions." Dualla said calmly.

"I want all our birds to remain aside us until ordered otherwise." Sending one or two squadrons barreling at the alien ships would be suicide, Adama calculated. If they wanted anything accomplished, he figured either use all of them or none of them. "What's the status on my firing solution?"

"Targeting computer reports perfect lock." Gaeta said, scrutinizing his display. "I have a perfect reading on contact. Distance, range, position..."

"Sounds like the networked computers are doing their jobs." Tigh said proudly.

Gaeta shook his head. "No, the rest of the fleet had more modern sensors than we do, and they still didn't have any luck."

"Almost like they want to be seen." Adama realized. He turned to Tigh. "Squids pulled the same trick on some of our patrols back at Canceron. Make us think we had them, reel us in..."

"Looks an awful lot like a trap, doesn't it?" Tigh said gruffly.

Over the sounds of blaring alarms, Felix combed over his readings with mounting confusion. None of this made any sense. Something was out of place. Although, that thing out there clearly wasn't Colonial, so did it matter? Ultimately, his instincts tipped the scale in his head. "Commander, this isn't adding up."

Adama and Tigh turned towards Felix in unison as the officer began to explain himself. "The aliens use some kind of reaction-less drive we don't really understand. They don't leave any detectable engine wake. This ship, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Almost like some of our fusion drives."

"We can talk about what's under its hood after it's dead." Tigh said, dismissing the officer.

"All gun batteries fire on my mark." Adama commanded. Somewhere in his gut, though, something _was_ giving him pause. He shrugged it off. There wasn't any time to second guess himself. They'd be sacrificing accuracy from this range, but he had no intention of flying into a trap. "Three, two-"

" _Sir!"_ Dualla cried out. The commander snapped his head around. "The wireless is picking something up." The officer hesitated. "Coming from the direction of that ship."

"What?" Tigh said, more out of annoyance than anything else. "It's probably just white noise."

"No, no it's not." Dualla rebuked. She fiddled with her console, fully aware of the daggers her commanding officers was shooting at her with their eyes. " _Oh my Gods._ I can actually understand them! I think they're trying to hail us!" She hammered her control panel, desperately trying to clear up whatever it was she was hearing over her headset. "They're saying..." She blinked hard. Her jaw dropped. She looked as if she were trying to say something, but only vague noises came out. "You need to hear this."

"It's definitely some sort of trick." Tigh said bitterly. "They could be stalling for time, calling in reinforcements of their own."

"Maybe." Adama replied, staring ahead into space. He never fully believed the 'always trust your instincts' spiel. The chaotic environment of a battlestar wasn't the place to let primal urges dictate decision making. Despite himself, he couldn't help but feel Gaeta was on to something. "Patch it through the speaker, D. Let's hear what they have to say."

The speakers crackled to life. A garbled, male voice filled the room.

" _-Captain John Sheridan of the Earth Alliance Ship Lexington. We mean no harm. Our intentions are peaceful. Please respond. Transmission Repeats-"_

The world within CIC screeched to a halt. Every soul in the room disregarded whatever they were doing to gawk at the voice playing on loop in the background. The voice on the loudspeaker might as well have been the only thing in the galaxy.

"The _what_ alliance _?"_ Tigh let out in shock.

Adama shook himself back into his senses, gripping the metal in front of him. "That's not possible."

"Earth _doesn't exist."_ The colonel protested. "It's a myth, a damned fool's tale."

Adama supported his weight on CIC's command console, deep in thought, mulling over the transmission.

"Bill, do _not_ tell me you're actually considering this..." He paused, throwing his hand in the air, searching for words. "This fraking absurdity!"

The commander met Saul's eyes. "Two days ago, aliens were an absurdity, too." He stood up straight, eying the Dradis console and unknown contact staying well away from _Galactica._ "Felix was right. Something isn't adding up."

Tigh exhaled hard. "Bill, if you're wrong..."

"Then you can kill me later."

"That's if we're _alive_ later."

"D, patch me through the wireless." Adama commanded, grabbing the receiver and holding it to his mouth.

Dualla nodded. The woman was a devout believer in the scrolls, Adama recalled. He wondered what was running through her head as he held the push to talk button. "This is the Battlestar _Galactica,_ of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, to the ship claiming to be of the Earth Alliance. We have received your transmission. Do you acknowledge?"

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

" _This is the Battlestar Galactica, of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, to the ship claiming to be of the Earth Alliance. We have received your transmission. Do you acknowledge?"_

Sheridan, alongside the rest of the occupants of _Lexington's_ bridge, breathed a sigh of relief. "That's progress." He said encouragingly.

"Battlestar..." Jeremiah said, testing the word. "Quaint name for a ship."

"Vessel's targeting computer still has its eyes locked on us." Harris stressed.

 _Lexington's_ captain scanned his mind for words. He'd been briefed on first contact situations. It was part of every commanding officer's training, before the war broke out. He supposed the same principles applied here.

" _Galactica,_ we acknowledge. We're not looking for a fight."

The gruff, masculine voice cracked through the speakers. " _Somebody is."_ A brief pause. The voice resumed before Sheridan could finish choosing his words. " _We thought Earth was a myth."_

"Myth?" Jeremiah asked too low for the microphones to pick up.

"We detected your people's transmissions from the edge of this system." John explained, growing more hopeful. "We weren't aware of any humans outside of the Earth Alliance."

" _We weren't aware of intelligent life outside our system at all."_

"Unaware?" Sheridan replied, bewildered. "You must have known-"

"Captain!" Harris called out. "Four new contacts! All dreadnought sized, they just appeared out of nowhere!"

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

"New contacts!" Gaeta cried out. The central Dradis screen lit up with wave of brilliant green. "Squawking Colonial IFF. Multiple battlestars just jumped into our obit."

" _Galactica, this is Olympia actual. Thought you could use a hand. Our battlegroup is preparing to engage your target."_

The Dradis was flooded with dozens upon dozens of smaller green dots as fighters were shoveled out of their mother ships. The cavalry was here. And it was about to unleash hell on their new acquaintance.

" _Olympia_ , this is _Galactica_ actual. Stand down!" Adama yelled through the receiver. "Target is not alien! Hold fire!"

" _Galactica actual, please repeat?"_

"Contact may _not_ be hostile." Adama replied, placing stress on the ' _not_.'

" _Our Dradis isn't pegging it as Colonial. Your computers are outdated, you can't trust them."_

Adama shook off the jab at his ship. " _Olympia_ , you're not going to believe this." He said into the receiver. He hoped to Hell his gut was right, and he wasn't leading them further into a trap. "Honestly, I don't believe it myself yet."

" _Adama, what the frak are you talking about?"_

"Well," Tigh said, hinting at a laugh. "This war just got a lot more interesting."

* * *

Doctor Baltar's eyes felt like they were ready to roll back into his head. He shut his eyelids hard, rubbing his fingers over them, before throwing his head back.. He'd do anything to make the stinging go away. He'd been pouring over this same stream of data for over six hours. The _Dione_ was the first battlestar to have its blackbox recovered after the Battle of Canceron, and whoever was running the prison Baltar had come to know as his new job had a fervent desire to find out what was in it.

So, here he was, looking over line after line of senseless code, trying to figure out what exactly it was about the alien ships that rendered their sensors useless. And, much like those Dradis systems, his mind could see nothing.

"There's no network sabotage." Baltar concluded, stroking his chin. "It's like the space around our ships is being flooded with white noise, and our sensors can't penetrate it."

From across the room, Uilana Stiebel peered through the apochromatic lens of her microscope. The fragment of hull selected for their lab's examination had proved exceptionally troublesome. They'd been forced to take the thing to one of the metal refineries in orbit, and used a specialized laser to carve samples out.

"This is unreal." She said as she gawked at the synthetic specimen. "This doesn't look metallic at all. I almost want to say this structure looks crystalline."

"You're telling me their ships are made of crystals?"

"Not that. Not just from looking at one fragment from one section of their hull. But I'll be damned if it doesn't bare an absurd resemblance."

"So does that mean anything useful?"

"Well, no. Maybe. Just not right now. It's another piece of the puzzle." She looked up from the microscope, picking up a datapad displaying tables of data from tests they'd run on the sample prior to carving it up.

"Look at this." She said, sliding the tablet between them. "It's not just that their ships use some sort of super-jamming on steroids. If that were the case, our battlestars could just use something else to get a lock and be fine. Thermals, LIDAR, anything. Thermals refused to pick them out from the cosmic background, and when they tried LIDAR, the aliens just _refracted the laser around their ships."_

Gaius took the datapad from her, scrolling down its touchscreen for himself. "Their ships made a beam of light move out of the way?"

"Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Their stealth system is out of these worlds. If it were just some combo of Dradis-absorbent material and jamming, this would be a lot easier, but _this."_ She said, smacking the datapad. "I mean, we can look at their ships just fine! Visible light isn't affected, but the laser is. This doesn't make any Gods damned _sense."_

Baltar plopped the tablet down on the table, and stood up. Blood rushed to his head. He couldn't recall the last time he actually stood up. "Uilana, It's been a pleasure working with you, but I desperately need to find a bed before my body decides to rebel against me."

Uilana frowned. "Fine, I understand. I'll find someone else to be my rubber duck."

Baltar simply nodded. He couldn't bring himself to say anymore. It was a ten minute walk from their laboratory near the top of CIPED's dome to the on-site housing that had been erected specifically for them the day before. It'd been a rushed job, and the accommodations were barely adequate. They didn't even have proper running water yet! How could they subject him to that?

"Doctor Baltar!" Came an unfamiliar voice. A pang of fear ran through his body. He used to take great pride in hearing his name separated from the crowd. To be recognized for his work, especially by the rather influential people he'd met over the last two days. But now, all he wanted was for the rest of the world to just go away for a few hours. "I was hoping I'd catch you."

Baltar didn't bother turning to meet him. The man walked in front of him, smiling that stupid smile everyone in a fancy suit around here seemed to wear. He held his hand out. Baltar grudgingly took it. "Name's Hutchinson. I'm an assistant to the Minister of Defense."

"Are you?" Baltar said with feigned surprise. "And what can I do for you, mister Hutchinson?

"Please, walk with me." He said, putting a hand on Baltar's back.

"Look, I've barely slept since you people abducted me from my home the other day, and I would really appreciate it if you would just get to the point." Baltar said pointedly.

Hutchinson's smile vanished. Which made him look slightly more tolerable, actually. "I understand, doctor. Suffice it to say that, the progress being made here is... well..."

"Is what? Pitiful? Well that's what happens when you give us two days to infer an entire species' technological base from a scrap of hull and sensor logs."

The man put his hand up. "That's not what we mean. It's what's _in_ that data that's scaring the hell out of us." He said grimly. "We're out of our league here, plain and simple. And we don't know how long it'll be, if we even have the capability, to close that gap."

"So where do I come into this?" Baltar inquired.

"When we fought the Cylons, we looked to the past to survive. To get through this war, we might have to do the opposite."

Baltar raised an eyebrow. "What exactly are you saying?"

Hutchinson's fingertips connected. "Doctor, you're somewhat infamous for some of your controversial views on computer technology, are you not?"

"You mean my _sane_ views?" Baltar said smugly. "Yes, of course. We're chaining ourselves to the past and it's holding back our future."

The man's smile returned. "I couldn't agree more. And that attitude is the reason we want you for this project. Nobody else would be willing to go near it."

Now the assistant had Baltar's full attention. He scooted towards the man. "What can you tell me about this... project?"

Hutchinson leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Doctor, what exactly are your views regarding artificial intelligence?"

* * *

The constant, rhythmic clanking of four sets of mag boots echoed down _Lexington's_ corridor. With each passing second, the anticipation filling the hallway grew that much thicker. Sheridan glanced at Zoah. The EarthGov official seemed noticeably worried. Behind him, a pair of _Lexington's_ security officers stood shoulder to shoulder, PPG's holstered on their belts. A necessary precaution, but ultimately, a futile one. Sheridan's ship was at the mercy of the five hulks of metal surrounding it, and the crew knew it.

"Captain, this situation is completely unprecedented." Zoah admitted. "We have to handle this with the utmost care."

"Well, we may or may not have led the most powerful race of aliens we know of directly to their home system after _you_ insisted we come here." Sheridan replied, making no effort to hide his accusation. "So I'd say there's a good chance that ship has sailed."

"That's my point. We have to choose our words carefully." Zoah replied.

"And I suppose that means letting you do all the talking, right?"

"I'm just stressing the need for _discretion_." Zoah said, stretching out his words. "First Contact is stressful under the best conditions. We don't know what these people are like, or if it was even the Minbari they fought at all."

Sheridan bit his tongue. The four stopped at the end of the hallway, greeted by the dull gray bulkhead of one of _Lexington's_ many airlocks. The small, shuttle-like craft sent to greet them would finish its docking maneuver any moment now. The captain tapped the small communications device stuck to the back of his hand, a standard piece of Earth Force kit. "Sheridan to bridge, what's the status of our guests?"

" _Their docking apparatus is somewhat different from ours."_ Came Garcia's voice. " _We had to finagle it a bit, but I think we have it. We'll be ready to open the airlock momentarily."_

"No matter what happens, do _not_ shoot first." Sheridan implored to the two security officers behind them. They gave their affirmations as the shuttle's docking clamps audibly clicked into place, and the small light above the bulkhead changed from red to green. A few moments of pressurisation later, and the door began the slow process of sliding open.

The first shape to appear on the other side of the bulkhead was a tall, pale skinned man clad in thick, black armor, donning a helmet that obscured the top half of his face. To Sheridan's dismay, he brandished an assault weapon between his hands. Not pointed ahead, at least. Another ten like him were revealed, one after the other. Centered between them was a man dressed in dark blue and red. Sheridan had the impression he was the guy in charge.

"My name is Captain John Sheridan." He began, eyes locked on that particular man. "I'm the commanding officer of this ship."

"And I am Li Zoah. Ranking Earth Alliance official on this ship." Zoah said, placing a single foot forward. Some of the armed men twitched at his movement. Zoah put his foot back in place.

"Captain Sheridan. Li Zoah." Came the man standing opposite of the bulkhead. His eyes darted from Sheridan's legs up his torso, finally settling on his eyes. "So you're the supposed Earthers."

Sheridan smiled weakly. "Suppose we are."

One of the armed men, a nervous, younger looking lad, piped up. "I always knew, you were out there." He got out. "Praise the Lords of Kobol, the Gods _are_ real!"

" _Enough."_ The officer said, silencing the man behind him. "Captain Sheridan, do yo-" The man made two steps forward on _Lexington's_ side of the airlock before he tumbled forward, then flung himself upside down in the gravity-less environment. His arms flailed widely for support, his eyes bursting out with intense shock. Sheridan reached forward to help the man up, only to be answered by the armed guards aiming their weapons for him. One of them reached forward, grabbing the officer from _Lexington's_ hallway, and pulling him back over the barrier. He hit the floor, head first, with a thud.

With a thud.

The impact hit Sheridan's ear's like a gunshot. He _hit the floor._

The man _hit the floor!_ That shuttle had _gravity._ That ship was absolutely tiny! How in the hell did it have artificial gravity!

"Frakkers have no gravity!" exclaimed the officer, working himself back to his feet. He looked like he was holding back the urge to vomit. "Mag-boots on, all of you."

The soldiers manipulated a panel built into their armor, and a series of loud clanks echoed through the hallway.

"I apologize for that." Sheridan said, eyes darting across the alien, yet oddly familiar ship in front of him. For all the stress, he was eager as hell to find out what other secrets could be hidden away on board.

"Do you recognize these ships?" The man asked, taking a small device out of his pocket and presenting it to Zoah. Sheridan leaned over to view the screen. Pictured, to his mounting horror, was a formation of light-blue warships in sharp contrast to the blackness of space. The sight of those ribbed hulls and protruding fins sent shivers down his spine. Whatever small, glimmer of hope he'd been holding onto vanished as the full weight of what that image represented slammed into him. If their ship had gravity, he wouldn't have been able to support his own weight.

"Yes. I do." Sheridan said solemnly to the man. "Those are Minbari warcruisers alright."

"Minbari?" The officer asked, his mouth going over each syllable.

"Yes, Minbari. That's what they call themselves."

"So you've made contact with this race?"

"They're a highly aggressive people." Zoah said, fighting to speak before Sheridan had a chance to get another word in. "They attacked one of our expeditions a few months ago. We've been fighting a bloody war with them ever since."

"A fleet of their ships appeared in our system two days ago." Explained the officer. "They killed nearly a hundred thousand people before we managed to drive them off."

One hundred thousand. The number buried itself deep within Sheridan's head. More people killed in two days than in the six months Earth had been fighting the Minbari. _And it's your fault. You brought them here._

Then, the crushing emotion was lifted from Sheridan for just an instant, as the second half of the officer's sentence hit him. "Wait, you _drove them off?"_

"That we did." The officer replied. "At a price almost too high to pay."

"It seems we share a common enemy." Zoah said. "I think it would be prudent if I spoke with your government directly."

"That's not for you to dictate." The officer replied. "Our orders are to escort you off this ship."

"I'd prefer the meeting take place on our ship. I'm sure you understand."

"Maybe I wasn't being clear." The officer gestured to his men. They raised their weapons to the four. "We're not ready to believe this isn't just an elaborate trap. Awfully convenient, you showing up just days after an alien attack. So you're coming with us. I'm sure _you_ understand."

"Now just-" Sheridan raised his arm, cutting Zoah off.

"We'll come voluntarily, as long as my crew is unharmed." John proclaimed. "I'm carrying a sidearm on my left hip, if you want to confiscate that first."

"Disarm them." The officer ordered. A pair of guards stomped forward, grabbing the PPG from Sheridan's belt, and ripping the communicator from his hand. One of them shoved his hands behind his back, cuffing them. The guard holding Sheridan's PPG twirled it in his hands, examining it like a child would a new toy.

"Your ship is to stay put here." He replied. "I'd advise your crew against any sudden actions."

The marine grabbed Sheridan's collar, dragging him into the shuttle. The moment he crossed the threshold, the sensation of gravity overwhelmed Sheridan. He collapsed onto the floor, his weakened muscles unable to prepare themselves for gravity's full force returning to them at once. Sheridan mused if these people didn't live in stronger gravity than Earth standard, or if it'd just been that long since he felt its pull.

* * *

Baltar had never known how valuable a night of decent sleep had been until he'd been deprived of it. Hutchinson had refused to go into any further detail at the laboratory, and the doctor had refused to go anywhere else until he had time to make himself civilized. So here he was, six hours of sleep and a crappy cafeteria meal later, more than eager to figure out what all this was about.

"You look a lot more alive this time around." Hutchinson remarked as the automatic doors to CIPED's dome slid open.

"A few hours of sleep does wonders for a person."

The two exchanged words sparingly for the duration of the short walk to the elevator. Hutchinson's boss, the Minister of Defense himself, was apparently very keen to secrecy for this particular project. Baltar suspected those two buzzwords Hutchinson used the other night had something to do with it. The duo stepped into the elevator, which unexpectedly started hurling them downwards, into the ground.

"I didn't even know CIPED _had_ lower-level labs."

"Not a lot of people do."

The doors whooshed open to reveal a brightly lit, dull colored room. His eyes locked onto the most out of place thing in the room. Spaced evenly across the concrete floor were a half dozen of what Baltar quickly recognized as missiles. Missiles! Good sized ones, too. The intimidating looking pieces of military kit were painted a plain gray, but more interestingly, they each had a sort of thick, emerald-green metal strap wrapped around their radius.

"These must be an older design." Baltar noted.

"And where are you getting that from?"

Baltar ran his hands along the projectile's ice-cold steel, coming to rest atop a small, exaggerated G etched on one of the warhead's compartments. So much of his childhood had revolved around devouring every minute detail of the company behind that infamous insignia. "Well, the Graystone Industries logo is a dead giveaway. Caprica's military contracted them to write up the code behind a lot of their targeting algorithms before the Colony's unified."

"Good eye, doctor." Hutchinson said, placing his hand on the missile beside them. "These things are pretty old. About forty-three years, to be exact. Vintage Apostle-series missiles."

"So these things date back to before the Cylon war?" The doctor asked, returning his attention returned to the peculiar addition.

"That'd be correct." Hutchinson said, rubbing his hand across that unusual green strap. "They were part of a very old military study. You might have heard of it. The Hammerhead Project."

Baltar's eyes widened at the words. "These missiles are from _the Hammerhead Project?"_

"The very ones."

Gaius's skin tingled with excitement. Suddenly, he admired the old warhead with a newfound reverence. "That program was a major case study through my entire computer engineering degree."

Hammerhead had been one of the more controversial projects to come out of the woodwork in the years leading up the Cylon war. The basic idea had been around for as long as the Colonies had waged war amongst each other. People were expensive. Ships more so. Instead of risking lives and cubits in a border skirmish with another major colony, they'd send out these missiles to rove the spaceways. They'd cut their engines, barely detectable, where they'd bide their time, picking out targets of opportunity as they presented themselves.

The ever present problem with the idea had always been getting people to trust the missile to recognize acceptable targets on its own. A ship's IFF would tell the warhead if it was Caprican or otherwise, but the public had always been squeamish about the idea of letting the warhead decide on its own if a ship was carrying weapons or passengers. Then the Cylons happened, and now people balked at the idea of giving a weapon system any amount of autonomy.

"Not a lot of engineers wanted their name associated with the project after the war, even if it was strictly out of public view." Hutchinson explained.

"The military kept this gear lying around for forty years?" Baltar asked warily.

"Not quite that bad." the man said, raising his hand. "The missiles themselves were sitting in a boneyard with their warheads removed, but anything related to Hammerhead's software was locked away at the bottom of a deep, dark pit." He shook his head. "Hell, there's hardly anybody around who still remembers how the damned code for it worked. And that's where you come in, doctor."

Baltar's hands returned to his sides. Two sides fought for dominance within him. One devoted to the pursuit of progress, while the other drunk in the realization of what might happen to him if people ever figured out what he would be taking part in.

And then, one more small voice was gaining momentum in the back of his head. He'd be a key part of bringing a new weapon into the war. When, _if_ they won, he'd be a hero. The man who defied convention and risked his career to save billions.

Baltar straightened himself. "The people would have your head on a pike if they knew you were thinking of bringing intelligent systems into the picture again."

"We aren't going that far just yet." Hutchinson said reassuringly. "We're not looking to create Cylon-esque warheads that can think for themselves, but the technology behind Hammerhead could be put to use on a smaller scale."

"If you want me on this, I need to know _exactly_ what your endgame is." Gaius said with what authority his voice could muster. "I'm not going to let you keep me in the dark, not with something like this."

"Absolutely." Said the aid with what appeared to be genuine resolution. "Our ships can't lock onto the Squids outside of point-blank range. The closest thing they can get is a rough approximation of their range and bearing. So, what if the missiles did all the heavy lifting once they left the tubes?"

"That's just active Dradis guidance." Baltar noted. "That isn't anything world-shattering."

In the military's world, two types of guidance profiles existed. Semi-active Dradis Tracking, or Say-Det's, required the attacking spacecraft to maintain a constant lock on its target, guiding it until detonation. The alternative, Active Dradis Guidance, relied on a warhead's built-in Dradis system to take up the legwork after reaching a certain distance. It gave the attacker the freedom to disengage and begin evasive maneuvers, but came at a high cost. Dradis systems were expensive, and ones small enough to fit in a missile, yet track a target across hundreds of kilometers of space, were prohibitively so.

"The difference is, these missiles won't even have a set target when they're fired." Hutchinson countered. "Define the parameters of an acceptable target, give them a rough area of space, and bombs away. Make no mistake, this isn't about breaking their stealth. This is about letting a Battlestar fire a volley from five-hundred kilometers away instead of fifty."

Gaius leaned against the Apostle as Hutchinson gave his overview. He raised a finger. "The aliens have a distressingly accurate point defense system. If you give our nukes more distance, that just means more will be shot down."

"Our idea is for entire Battlestar Groups to make use of the system, not individual ships." The man replied. "Admiral Cain's charge over Canceron proved their point defense system can be overwhelmed, just like any of ours."

Baltar pressed his thumb against the Graystone Industries insignia, dirtying it with layers of dust and grime. Ever so slowly, the doctor turned an eye to Hutchinson, his mind already lighting up with One of the voices in his head won out. The one he'd always followed since he was a boy. The one who got him where he was today. He smiled, and for the first time since his abduction, felt a sense of eagerness to get to work.

"So, when do I start?"

* * *

"I'd be _very_ careful what accusations you make, Lorann." Came the light, higher-pitched voice of Alyt Reval.

Alyt Lorann had always imagined himself as one not to shy away from controversy. If the situation ever presented itself, he hoped he would have the courage to speak his mind. In Minbari society, that situation rarely arose. Minbari kind, and the Warrior Caste in particular, were a very secluded bunch. Officers could join the ranks, reach the apex of their career, retire, and die of age with nothing of significance taking place.

Now that such a scenario was actually playing out in front of him, Lorann was ready to run himself against a brick wall. It would have been about as productive.

He cleared his throat. "Mysteries aside, the human system is unusually well fortified. We won't do Minbar any good if we're dead."

"No human system has ever held its own against an entire Minbari _fleet,_ let alone a Wind Sword battle group." Replied the opposing commander. "Did the humans give you one little scar on your head, and now you're afraid to face them?

"The humans aren't going anywhere!" Lorann spat out. "Why put Minbari lives at risk if we don't have to?"

"Lorann, think about what you're asking of us." Came the second commander. His posture was less rigid, though his skin was rough and wrinkled with age. "The _Drala'Fi's_ destruction was a punch to our gut. If we were to retreat now, it would be tantamount to admitting defeat a second time."

"The _Drala'fi's_ destruction should have been a wake up call!" Lorann protested. "A reminder that we can't let our technology allow us to give way to recklessness. Abidor's insistence on pressing this attack is the _very definition_ of recklessness."

"Have you considered Abidor might have a better picture of the battle than you do?" Inquired the first commander. "Just maybe, a better picture than a fresh Alyt who only just recently managed to claw his way to the adult's table?"

"I've held my post for _three years,_ Reval." Lorann stated bitterly. "And Abidor hasn't personally questioned some of the humans in this system. He seems to consider that beneath him."

"Abidor doesn't feel the need to micromanage every aspect of the war." Reval said curtly. "He's letting you play with your pets, then expects you to relay only the information that's actually important."

Lorann inhaled, formulating his counter, before cutting himself off. He let his breath out. He intentionally decided on every word. "Abidor may be allowing his personal vendetta against Starkiller to cloud his judgment."

He let the silence fill the room. Lorann tried to read the faces of his fellow captain's, but they'd had a good many years to block out those traitorous expressions. Noram's eye twitched just before his voice began.

"That's a very powerful accusation, Lorann." Noram said as he clasped his arms together in the front of his body. "I'm trying to be open minded with you, but you're stretching your luck to the breaking point."

"Talk to him yourself." Lorann said, nearly shoving the words out of his mouth before his mind could tell him to stop. "See for yourselves what he's getting us into, and why!"

"Coming here was a mistake." Reval said. The statement cut into Lorann like a knife. "I have a ship to command. Lorann, you need to understand. Abidor is our superior. If you want any place here, you need to respect that." The man said, rising up and giving Lorann a last, bitter look as he began for the exit. Every step felt like a thud.

"Alyt Reval is a little hot headed." Norm said, reassuringly. "But, he is correct. Abidor is our commander, and there's a reason he's Alyt'sa. He knows what he's doing"

"I so strongly hope so." Lorann said, less than convinced. Noram shook his head as he, too, stood up and began making his way out. The disappointment in the man's eyes was the most haunting feeling he'd had to endure yet. More so than Reval's harshness.

"Bringing in other Alyt's may have been a mistake." Khala said, only speaking up once she and Lorann were alone in the chamber. "If Reval were to tell Abidor about your doubts... That you went around his back to discuss them..."

"Then I'll take responsibility for it." Lorann said quickly, with more conviction than he actually felt. "I'm not going to stand by while he throws our fleet into the fire for nothing."

"There are other ways of speaking your mind. Ones that don't end with High Command raking you across hot glass."

"Like what?" Lorann said half mockingly, half genuinely hoping she had some idea. "I thought about convincing Abidor to send a handful of ships to report back to Minbar, but he wants every soldier here. And anything smaller than a frigate might not survive the trip back."

"We can-" Khala was cut off by a set of soft beeps beckoning for Abidor's attention. The alyt looked to the ceiling.

" _Alyt, an unknown craft just appeared at the outer edge of our sensor range."_

Lorann blinked. "One of our scouts?"

" _It's not Minbari. That's all we can be sure of."_

"Not Minbari?" The alyt thought out loud. His and Khala's heads snapped towards each other, exchanging curious glances. "We're on our way."

* * *

Alyt'sa Abidor had the entire fleet at attention by the time Lorann arrived at the bridge. Khala took her station to the fore of the chamber as Lorann called the ship's sensor feed directly to his terminal. He scanned space around them, looking for any blip or distortion that seemed out of the ordinary, to no avail.

"The ship vanished seconds after we detected it." Reported one of the command staff.

"Are we sure it wasn't a sensor ghost?" Lorann asked.

"Beyond any doubt." The young man answered. "Every ship in the fleet detected it, and every ship confirms it. A small ship with an unrecognized profile blinked into existence, then vanished just as quickly."

"He's right." Khala said. Lorann watched her scan through their sensor logs, finding the records of the peculiar spacecraft. "Their hyperdrive system reminds me of what we saw the humans use during the battle."

"It has to be human." Lorann deduced. "They're the only other intelligent life out here." Their fleet was tucked away far beyond the system's outskirts. The chances of the humans simply stumbling upon them would have been astronomical!

"That ship was small, barely strike-craft sized." Khala said, shaking her head. "They couldn't possibly build a hyperdrive capable ship that small."

"Then please, tell me who else-"

" _New readings!"_ Khala cried out, in sync with a pair of great red dots appearing on Lorann's display. These were anything but small. He waved a hand, switching from the information feed to a three dimensional view of the void.

They weren't human. In fact, their design was unlike anything the Minbari captain had ever seen. The metallic vessels were made with two sets of three protrusions laid atop each other, held in place by a central shaft. Lorann thought they looked more like starfish than starships.

"What in Valen's name are those?" He asked, standing from his chair.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

From the impossibly clean, sterile environment of the basestar's central hub, an atmosphere of apprehension gripped the dozen humanoid models gathered within. Streams of a charged, transparent liquid oozed from the ceiling, flowing down from ventricles within the Cylon ship, and into the pentagram shaped interface jutting out from the floor. The fluid collected in thin puddles on the outer edges of the structure. It certainly looked like water, but held the consistency of sludge.

It was from these cavities the Cylon leadership saw the world outside their ship. Their hands pressed firmly into the chilled liquid, they saw what the ship saw. They felt what the ship felt. Every pulse within its circuitry, every stray gamma ray. They became an extension of the ship, and they bent it to their will.

"We found them." D'anna announced to the chamber.

"There's more of them than we anticipated." Remarked a Four. His dark skin contrasted against the angelic brightness of the room. "So much noise. It's impossible to make out a number."

"Let's get this over with." Cavil said with resignation. He struggled to keep his hand within the information stream. He heard what the ship heard – And the ship heard screaming. An unyielding, agonizing scream that drowned out the world around them and left them in darkness.

"Start the transmission." D'anna said flatly, seeming to fight the same struggle he was.

* * *

A harsh, repeating beeping filled the room.

 _Ping_

 _Ping-Ping_

 _Ping-Ping-Ping_

"It's a sequence of numbers." Khala realized while the never ending pinging pierced the crew's ears. She hit a set of buttons, mercifully cutting off the sound before turning her chair to face Lorann. "Their ships are broadcasting a series of prime numbers."

Humans had attempted to communicate with them before. The first time, they couldn't decipher their language. That'd been just before their ships attacked the Grey Council without provocation. Every attempt at contact since then had been a plea for mercy.

"Something is off about these ships." Khala said, studying her instruments. "Visually, they're obviously metallic. Our interior scans are indicating something else entirely."

"Explain something else?" Lorann pressed.

"We aren't detecting human life signs." Khala began. "We aren't detecting _any_ individual life signs. The entire ship is giving off a type of signature I've only ever seen twice before."

The Alyt raised his eyebrow. "Seen from where?"

"From Vorlon ships." Khala replied cryptically. "Under the surface, that entire thing is writhing. It's pulsating, breathing."

Lorann stroked his chin. Minbari were almost supernaturally smooth compared to other races. "Organic ships?"

"Just as organic as it is electric."

"Are you absolutely positive?"

"I am." She said resolutely.

"Abidor must have come to the same conclusion." Lorann said, tapping his fingers on his console. "He hasn't ordered us to open fire."

"Should we reply to their broadcast?"

"That's Abidor's decision." Lorann's fingers paused. His eyes lit up before he raised his voice again. "Order Tarreck to interrogate the prisoners, see if they have any knowledge of those ships."

* * *

Agathon awoke to that familiar thud of his cell door opening. The oppressing darkness that surrounded him gave way to the light. Ironically, it only served to make his eyes fight to shut it out again. The footsteps of his interrogator approached him. He'd learned to anticipate his approach by that heavy-footed walk that echoed through the room.

The alien grabbed Helo's chin, forcing his head upright. The officer squinted, his eyes trying to adjust to the sudden brightness. The figure raised an arm, pressed a pair of switches on a device, and a holographic image popped above him.

"Do you recognize this ship?" Were the interrogator's first and only words.

Helo examined the image, quickly coming to the conclusion he hadn't the foggiest idea what he was looking at. It looked like a pair of starfish plastered on top of each other. He gave a slight shake of his head. Any more movement was agony.

"It uses the same hyperdrive technology as your vessels." The interrogator said, in a tone that implied it should have made Helo feel less confused, as opposed to more.

"I've never seen it." He croaked.

"It's near the edge of your system."

"Wait..." Helo said, letting a thought click in his head. It did bare a vague resemblance to...

"What?" The alien said insistently.

Helo quickly realized his mistake. _Now_ he was in it. "It's nothing, it couldn't be."

"What couldn't be?" The alien said impatiently.

The officer's head collapsed. "It looks like something they showed in history books... training videos..."

"What did they show you?" The alien said, his curiosity evidently piqued.

"Cylons." Helo got out. "Cylon basestars, during the war, they looked... Well, the Cylons were these machines. We built them, used them for menial crap we didn't want to do ourselves."

The alien's gaze remained unchanged. His posture was rigid. The hologram still floated, rotating in mid air. Helo gasped for another breath. "The Cylons revolted. Nearly destroyed us. Their ships, the basic idea, it looks similar."

"You created intelligent machines?" His interrogator said incredulously. "That's not possible. Intelligence life needs a soul to inhabit it. You can't _manufacture_ souls."

Helo croaked out a chuckle. "A lot of people died stopping them. They might not agree with you."

"You might have created something that can imitate thought." The alien said accusingly, "You did _not_ create intelligence."

"At some point, it stops mattering."

"What became of the Cylons?"

"We don't know." Helo said simply, to the alien's increasingly apparent glare. "We signed an armistice with them, after years of war. They vanished. We never heard from them again."

The alien cocked its head. It let out a noise that Helo somewhat recognized as disgust before it turned and waved its arm. The motion signaled the lights to shut off, leaving Helo in utter darkness once again.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

In contrast to the rest of Minbari technology, their translators left something to be desired. Minbari society was exceptionally introvertive, only occasionally making contact with other major powers of the galaxy, and seldom approached someone entirely new. It made the process of deciphering this new race's communications difficult and time consuming.

Abidor's ship had returned the prime numbers. The interstellar equivalent of waving one's hand in the air and declaring that you were, indeed, a sentient species. The unknown ships transmitted a data packet that Lorann assumed was their species' attempt to share their language with them. He almost wished Tarreck was up here. He at least had some knowledge of language beyond Minbari tongue. They were groping in the dark.

"They're sending something again." Khala announced. "I think they're trying to say something to us this time."

"Is our translator having any luck?"

"I think so!" She said, her tone rising. "Very basic, but we have something. Abidor is routing it the rest of the fleet."

* * *

 _We are Cylon. We come with hopes of peace for both our kinds._

Dozens of tormenting moments passed. Time ticked by on The Cylon basestar, Three's hand nearly numb from the pressure of holding it so tight to the information stream. Finally, the aliens saw it fit to take her breath away.

 _ **We are Minbari.**_

Elation tingled across Deanna's synthetic skin. She grinned through her victory, both of Cylon kind, and hers over Cavil. "They're responding." All at once, the Cylon ship transmitted back to the aliens.

 _We were not aware of other life in our galaxy. Where did you come from?_

 _ **Far from here.**_

 _How long has your kind traveled the stars?_

 _ **How did you find us.**_

Three's grin vanished. She looked to Cavil, whose solemn expression stayed locked beneath him.

"Not very talkative." One said flatly.

"They haven't shot us yet." Leoben said, his thumb twitching and scratching against the fluid. "We don't know how they converse."

 _We are explorers._

 _ **We are in open space. Far from resources. You were seeking us.**_

 _We wished to greet your kind._

 _ **How did you know of us.**_

 _We monitor this system._

 _ **You monitor the humans?**_

 _The humans._

Deanna noticed Cavil's lip twitch. Her legs shook. The constant shifting of a centurion's eyes, back and forth, strayed at the edge of her vision. Their collective voice reached out again,

 _The humans abused us. Raped us. Chained us. They are a threat to Cylon kind. They are a threat to you._

* * *

" _Lorann!"_

Tarreck announced his presence to the room, his fists clenched at his sides. The man's face brimmed with disgust. "Lorann, those things are abominations."

The snapped away from the holographic view. Tarreck approached the Alyt with eyes that seemed ready to set the air around him on fire. He raised his fist, pointing a finger towards the holographic display of those starfish-shaped ships, as if he expected to summon lightning from its tip.

"What in Valen's name did you _find,_ Tarreck?" Lorann asked, pressing down on Tarreck's hand.

"They are machines." Tarreck said, nearly spitting the word out. "Metal husks that pretend to have a soul. The humans claim to have built them."

Lorann could feel his face twisting involuntarily. " _Created_ them?" He asked, looking back at the smooth curvatures along the new arrival's ships. "Tarreck, those ships are as organic as they are metallic. I don't care how different these humans are from the Earth Alliance, the technology on those ships is a thousand years out of their reach."

Tarreck opened his mouth, teeth bared, ready to continue his tirade. Then he stopped. His voice dropped. "Organic?"

"Those ships are _alive,_ Tarreck."

"But the only ones who can build organic ships..." Tarreck started, his eyes looking upward.

"Are the Vorlons." Lorann finished.

"Alyt, the Cylons are requesting a video feed." Khala said, eyes locked ahead of her. "Abidor is accepting. He's routing the feed to the rest of the fleet."

The external view displayed at the front of the room dissolved, replaced by an interior shot of what Lorann assumed was the interior of the Cylon ships. It certainly didn't take after any Vorlon ship he'd seen. Those ships had hulls that resembled muscle and tissue. What he saw now was clearly metallic. The projection was sterile and featureless. The image flickered.

A dozen figures popped into existence. They stood around a giant, central hub. Clear liquid flowed down its walls from a source off screen. Nothing like a Vorlon ship. Nothing like any other race he'd ever encountered, either.

But it was the figures that made the hair on Lorann's skin stand on end. They weren't the mysterious encounter suits he'd seen Vorlons wear. They weren't the incomprehensible forms he'd heard of in stories, or ethereal concentrations of energy.

They were human. Clearly, unmistakably human. An older man, a woman with long, brown hair. A balding, dark skinned man. And beyond the twelve, a number of metal monsters with a red, electronic eye, shifting back and forth. The humans looked expressionless as the brown-haired woman spoke in real time to Abidor.

" _On behalf of Cylon kind, we humbly greet you."_

Silence was her reply. Alyt'sa Abidor himself was the only man permitted to answer her. Lorann assumed their Alyt'sa was having a terse conversation with his command staff. After some moments, the older man whispered something to the woman. Her face grew more and more concerned.

" _HER!"_

Tarreck screamed across the room. Lorann grabbed for his heart at the shock from his subordinates outburst.

"That woman! That _thing!"_ He continued, pointing at the left-most figure on the display. A younger human female. "Her face! Her body! It's identical! She's sitting in a cell on this ship!"

"Tarreck, _what are you talking about now?"_ Lorann pleaded as much as asked.

The interrogator looked too stunned to reply. After a tense few moments, he raised his arm to manipulate the attached device. An image of a chained and battered human woman appeared above him. "Her! The human captive! Look! They're the same!"

"That doesn't mean-"

"Yes it does!" Tarreck shouted. "The look in their eyes. I _never_ mistake them. They're one in the same, Lorann. There is no denying it!"

"You-"

"Abidor is sending an encrypted transmission to the fleet." Khala cut Lorann off. "He's commanding us to open our gun ports and prepare to fire on his command."

" _No_!" Lorann cried out. An instant later, he bit his lip. Abidor was in command. His opinions were of no concern. He shut his eyes so hard he felt like his eyelids were ready to tear apart. "Open the gun ports." He commanded. "Lock our targeting computer on the lead ship and await Abidor's word."

* * *

"Still nothing." Cavil said, more annoyed than anxious.

"Give them time." D'anna replied. Her initial optimism was rapidly giving way.

"They could still be trying to translate our language." Leoben offered. "We can't be-"

"Something's happening!" D'anna called out. The twelve remained connected to the data stream that was their way of interacting with the basestar and the space around it. The Ship felt a tingling building up in the space around it. Like the void was bubbling with energy.

"Radiation spikes coming from the alien ships!" An Eight cried.

"This is over." Cavil announced. "We're getting the hell out of here."

"We can't!" D'anna protested. "We've come so far, made so much progress!"

"You're going to get us killed!" Cavil said pointedly. "I don't give a frak about taking another bath, but if these aliens are hostile, we can't afford to throw away two basestars for nothing."

"I'm not going to let you do this, Cavil." D'anna said, removing her hand from the data stream. "We had a vote, and we're going to see it through."

Cavil looked at Three with revulsion. He glanced at Four, then at Eight. He let out a sigh. D'anna's expression turned to confusion. She cocked her head as Cavil reached for his hip. He revealed a pistol from its holster, raising it at Three's head. Confusion turned to hurt and anger.

"One, don't you fraking da-"

Cavil squeezed twice. Three dropped to the ground, blood spurting profusely from her forehead. He turned his focus back on the command hub. "Initiate jump prep."

"Spooling up drive." Four said nonchalantly as blood flowed across his shoes. "Ready for jump in ten sec-"

Fire erupted across the basestar's central hub as the Minbari warships opened fire all at once. Sparks turned to flame for a brief few moments before the hull ripped open. The concentrated fire broke the Cylon ship's spine, sucking blood and metal into space before the two basestars consumed themselves in flame.

* * *

Cavil woke up cold and numb, gasping for air fighting that same sensation of dystrophy he dealt with only days before. A copy of Three was there, standing above him, arms at her hips, glaring a disappointed glare. Cavil allowed his head rest on the pod. He coughed, clearing the amniotic fluid out of his throat.

"There. Are you happy now?"


End file.
